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Arne Nordheim ‎- Electric (1998)


Norweski kompozytor Arne Nordheim zmarł w 2010 roku. Stał się za życia narodowym kompozytorem swej ojczyzny. Król uhonorował go wspaniałą posiadłością na jednym ze wzgórz Oslo. Opowiem o jego związkach z naszym krajem. Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia, założone w 1957 roku, było placówką doświadczalną, jednostką produkcyjną polskiej radiofonii, lecz w historię wpisało się przede wszystkim jako ośrodek twórczy o znaczeniu europejskim.

Wśród wielu zagranicznych gości warszawskiego Studia, zaproszonych do autorskich realizacji, znalazła się w latach 60 i 70 niemal cała światowa czołówka sztuki elektroakustycznej, m in.: Lejaren Hiller, Franco Evangelisti, Francois Bernard Mache, Vittorio Gelmetti, Roland Kayn, Christian Closier, Tamas Ungvary, Nigel Osborne, Stephen Montague, Bengt Emil Johnson, Kare Kolberg i Arne Nordheim. Renomowany już wówczas kompozytor, odwiedził Polskę po raz pierwszy na zaproszenie Józefa Patkowskiego w 1968 roku, by zrealizować utwór na otwarcie Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter w Høvikodden koło Oslo z udziałem króla Norwegii Olafa V.

Sonja Henie, legendarna przedwojenna łyżwiarka światowej sławy, potem mecenas kultury i sztuki, która wraz z Nielsem Onstadem ufundowała placówkę, nosiła pierścień ozdobiony szlachetnym, bezcennym kamieniem, zwanym „solitaire”. Nordheim, który zaplanował kompozycję o takim właśnie tytule, w Warszawie otrzymał możliwość nieograniczonego korzystania z możliwości nowoczesnego wówczas studia, w asyście sprawnego i sprawdzonego inżyniera dźwięku Eugeniusza Rudnika. Wedle wspomnień Krzysztofa Szlifirskiego do tworzenia materiałów wyjściowych użyto m. in. dzielnika częstotliwości transponującego dźwięk o oktawę i jej wielokrotność. Kompozytor wraz z realizatorem od początku pracowali nad projektem kwadrofonicznym, ale z użyciem dwóch taśm stereo, zawierającym dwa różne materiały do synchronicznego odtwarzania. Osobnym zagadnieniem była projekcja dźwięku w nowoczesnej architekturze centrum. Na Uniwerystecie w Trondheim, dokąd kompozytor zabierał polskiego inżyniera, zbudowano a następnie wdrożono w Høvikodden zautomatyzowany system, służący przestrzennej dystrybucji materiału w głośnikach.

Już w 1970 roku Józef Patkowski zamówił u Nordheima utwór. „Pace” był w zamyśle zaangażowanym społecznie moralitetem, zawoalowanym jednak subtelną, wyciszoną elektroniką.

Według Rudnika, Nordheim podczas pracy był skoncentrowany, wyczulony na drobne niuanse dźwięku, bardzo taktowny i spokojny. Umiał nawiązać nadzwyczajną bliskość twórczą. Czyniąc ważne i intelektualnie odkrywcze gesty, zarazem chętnie przyjmował sugestie materiałowe, korzystając z wypracowanych przez Rudnika struktur. Przywoził do Warszawy gotowy zamysł formalny, który wypełniał tkanką, wykreowaną w Warszawie. Operował chętnie rozciągniętym czasem muzycznym, w narracji unikał przełomów emocjonalnych.

Młoda muzyka elektroakustyczna we wczesnej fazie swego rozwoju często chciała zaskakiwać, szokować szybkim następstwem zdarzeń, ich zbitkami, mnogością efektów. Nordheim zaś nadawał swej muzyce porządek i swoistą ideologię, w myśl której słuchacz musi mieć szansę śledzenia narracyjnych wątków i odczytania kierunku, w którym zmierza kompozytor. Jak wspomina dziś Rudnik, Nordheim we wspólnych działaniach dbał o ład nie tylko w organizacji pracy, lecz przede wszystkim muzyczny ale i logiczny, polityczny, etyczny, erotyczny i wszelki inny. Potrafił przy tym z trzasku włącznika uruchamiającego odtwarzanie magnetofonu Telefunken uczynić ostinato. Umiał zatem pozyskiwać dla siebie materie estetycznie „niegodne”, odrzucone, odpadowe.

Nordheima nie opuszczało poczucie humoru - swój zmontowany przy okazji pracy nad „Solitaire” utwór „Warszawa” intencjonalnie wypełni polskim, lecz… wiejskim folklorem muzycznym.  Zaś przedstawiając Rudnika Sonii Henje wmówi jej, że jest on byłym baletmistrzem słynnego rosyjskiego zespołu Diagilewa, i że tańczył w pierwszych przedstawieniach „Święta wiosny” Strawińskiego. W wyniku przemyślnego zabiegu z materiałów przygotowanych w Warszawie dla pawilonu skandynawskiego na wystawę światową w Osace w 1970, Nordheim wydzieli potem aż trzy autonomiczne kompozycje („Lux et tenebrae”, „Poly Poly”, „Fem Osaka-Biter” – „Pięć fragmentów z Osaki”), kierując się skandynawską zasadą niemarnowania, wykorzystania surowców do ponownej obróbki. Wszak pionierska ekspozycja z 1970 r. otwarcie i po raz pierwszy na dużą skalę promowała właśnie ekologię…

W utworach związanych ze skandynawską ekspozycją wyraźnie słychać zmontowane przez Nordheima polskie materiały pochodzące z fonoteki Rudnika (odgłosy szkoły, piwiarni, wiecu, wojskowej palby itp., a także skomponowane struktury). W Fem Osaka-Biter pojawiają się nawet fragmenty życiorysu Nordheima w języku polskim, czytane przez Annę Skrzyńską – pracownicę Studia.

Również w Polsce Nordheim zmontował swą muzykę do norweskiego filmu traktującego o Expo. Warto wspomnieć, że dźwiękowa ilustracja skandynawskiej wystawy ma swą partyturę. Jest to wykonany przez Rudnika w jednym egzemplarzu kolorowy kolaż złożony z dowcipnych rysunków kredkami i z powycinanych fragmentów gazet naklejonych na wielką płachtę papieru.

W Nordheimie tkwił pełen humoru „homo ludens”, folgujący swej fantazji, twórczość nabierała u niego cech nieskrępowanej zabawy, choć rzetelność i profesjonalizm były dlań zawsze priorytetem. (Bolesław Błaszczyk)


Everything should sing Arne Nordheim – a musical explorer and a leading figure in European music. He is known, admired, and sometimes criticized within and outside Norway through nearly half a century. The composer and his art, which consists of almost all genres and embraces widely different aesthetical positions, cannot be disregarded. His musical language imparts always a humanistic message. “Musical composition does not consist merely of writing down notes. Living a creative life involves expressing the restlessness in one’s soul. Composing is not only making sound. It is philosophy, silence, speed, rhythm, everything", Nordheim declared some years ago. This straight- forward characterization, correspond to Nordheim’s way of thinking about music and life – to his perception of self as well as to his courage to induce thought-laden processes to mental vibrations. Arne Nordheim is an eager and daring sound experimentalist, regarded for several decades as Norway’s most prominent figure on the international scene of modern music. Nordheim is rightly considered to be the one of the most innovative composers of our time. This status is affirmed by almost every work of his impressive output, which provides clear evidence of his inspiring pioneering spirit and supreme command of the compositional craft. Nordheim’s openness and international orientation, his willingness to receive musical impulses from abroad and his constant search for new means of expression and new musical forms and ideas, became a worthy alternative to the prevailing national-romantic movement in Norwegian music. It is Nordheim’s merit that new doors were opened to creating music – young composers especially learned through Nordheim that there was a worthy world to explore intensively outside Norway. Viewed in the light of these facts, it is not unreasonable to maintain that Nordheim’s pioneer work became of vital importance for the development of new music in Norway. The musicologist Kjell Skyllstad thus describes Nordheim as “the great reformer and restorer of Norwegian music after the Second World War”. Hallgjerd Aksnes, and expert on Nordheim’s music, calls him “a romantic and lyrical modernist, a literary oriented composer who likes to express his musical stance in extra-musical terms”. Finally, Nordheim’s Danish colleague, Per Norgard, has hailed Nordheim as “the innovator of not only Norwegian music, but also of Scandinavian music as such”. The creative impulse Arne Nordheim was born on June 20, 1931 in the town of Larvik on the Oslo Fjord. He was educated at the Music Conservatory in Oslo and had originally contemplated for himself a career as a church-organist. At the same time, he frequently received guidance in composition by the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe. The idea of becoming a composer came to Nordheim as a kind of revelation during a performance of Gustav Mahler’s second symphony Resurrection in April 1949 in Oslo. The aesthetic movement originated from the philosophical, human and prophetic statement manifested in Mahler’s musical heritage has been emphasized by several writers a distinguishing feature of Nordheim’s music and thinking. In his review of the latest Nordic Music Days in Finland, Anders Beyer writes of a moving performance of Nordheim’s mighty Violin Concerto (1996) interpreted by the young violinist Jaakko Kuussisto: “Nordheim takes the tradition from Mahler as his point of departure and writes apocalyptic music with great expressive power”. Nordheim from his side never contradicted his admiration for Mahler’s music. The first encounters with Mahler’s music – especially with Das Lied von der Erde and the song cycles – made a tremendous impact on the young composer and stimulated him. Just like Mahler, Nordheim is also deeply concerned with the eternal themes, which evolve around loneliness, love, death, nature, and the fundamental questions of life and human existence. As early as 1955, Nordheim heard musique concrete in Paris, and in 1959 he studied electroacoustic music in Bilthoven in the Netherlands. In the early 1960s, he began to write his own electroacoustic works. In the years 1967-1972, he made several journeys to Studio Eksperymentale in Warsaw, where he gradually was able to master the technique of electronic music. Some of the important electroacoustic works and compositions with combinations of electronic and traditional instruments were created in Warsaw. Nordheim has since been a leading figure within the electroacoustic music in the Nordic countries. Works such as Epitaffio for orchestra and electronics elements (1964, revised 1978), a key work based on the poem Ed é subito sera (And suddenly it is evening) by Salvatore Quasimodo, the first pieces in the “Response” series, and the works for electronics alone, Solitaire, Warszawa,Pace and Poly Poly (written for the World’s Fair in Osaka 1970) are from these years. In these early works too, Nordheim in nevertheless conscious of the necessity of inspiration and of a lyrical singing quality through his music. It is no coincidence that his motto is “Everything should sing”. New art, which after eras springs from a remote and almost forgotten past world, in the case of Nordheim from the musical and historical storehouse, reflects hidden memories and experiences. Nordheim masters the instrumentation and notation techniques of modern music, and he has a delicate feeling for sound combinations. Nevertheless, he was formerly considered an infant terrible by the Norwegian musical life. Over the years, however, these early works have gradually been accepted by the public and gained recognition in wider circles. A literary composer Many of Nordheim’s major works reflect directly and indirectly a deep interest in poetry and literature and they are based on literary sources concerning the great mysteries of life. He always prefers to use original texts in their original language, as he emphasizes the sonorous qualities of the language itself. It seems as if Nordheim employs texts in order to find inspiration to set his musical imagination in motion. As he said in 1989 interview with this writer: “I like to blend languages from different countries, different cultures and different ages. This is the case in my work Wirklicher Wald , in which I blend the old text from the Book of Job (in Hebrew) with the relatively new German text of Rilke. The texts bespeak the same eternal truth: Life is short. Some of the first works, I composed in my early youth, are written for poems. Since then, I have been deeply occupied with poetry. It is a joy for me to work with the human voice. Oddly enough, most of the texts, I work with, are not from Norway – a country otherwise so rich in literary tradition. I live and work in Norway but choose often for my works poetry from many different sources which all express the same fundamental questions of life”. Three vocal works are regarded as milestones in Nordheim’s production: Aftonland and Doria, two song cycles with orchestra accompaniment, and Eco for soprano solo, children’s choir, mixed choir and orchestra. Along with such early orchestral works as Epitaffio, Canzona per orchestra, Floating and Greening, these works have established Nordheim’s international status. Most of Nordheim’s works have philosophical and literary themes. His music can therefore also be viewed as a direct inheritor of European tradition and ideas of this tradition. Nordheim thinks quite often in terms of the continuation of the Romantic music, which also preserves the link to the past, which is of such importance to him. It is characteristic of Nordheim that even if he is far-reaching in his experiments with strongly contrasting sounds, he is never interested in the sound as such, in the sound for its own sake. The sound is and continues to be means of expression – means to rediscovering forgotten perceptions and images of the soul Nordeim has never professed to any certain ideology. His music is personal and independent of any particular school. The composer seeks to express ideas, which are not only abstractly musical but also humanistic. He wishes to create music with inner intensity and a universal meaning. Wirklicher Wald (1983) - one of Nordheim’s most moving works – may serve as a fine introduction to Nordheim’s music and world of ideas. His production embraces nearly all genres: purely instrumental works – symphonic pieces, chamber music (with or without texts), choral works, as well as electronic music, film scores, and music for ballet, theater and radio plays. But it seems as if his favorite domain is the orchestra. Among Nordheim’s great works through the last decade, we find Nidaros – an all-embracing dramatic oratorio, his stage music to the play Draumkvedet (The Dream Ballad), Violin Concerto, Suite for Solo Cello, second string quartet Stages, and Confutatis – Nordheim’s contribution to Requiem der Versohnung (Requiem of Reconciliation), a composition written by world-famous composers from various countries to mark the 50th anniversary of he end of the Second World War. Over the years, Nordheim has received many prizes and distinctions, and among them The Nordic Council’s Music Prize, The Norwegian Culture Council’s prize of honour, The Prix Italia, and the Anders Jahre’s Culture Prize. Nordeim has been appointed Honorary-Member of ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) in 1997. (ewh)

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Kōhachiro Miyata - Japan: Shakuhachi - The Japanese Flute (1991)


This album features serenely beautiful, centuries-old compositions performed solo by shakuhachi master Kohachiro Miyata of the Ensemble Nipponia and recorded live during the group’s first North American tour in 1976. In the years since its original release on vinyl, Western audiences have become increasingly knowledgeable about the sounds of both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture. That familiarity makes the performances preserved on this disc perhaps even more compelling to the informed audiences of today.

The shakuhachi is the most important wind instrument of Japan, where it has been used for well over a millennium. There are few, if any, other instruments in the world that associate so complex a playing technique with such simplicity of construction. Despite the presence of only five holes (and no keys), the instrument has a complete chromatic scale of more than two octaves. Larger shakuhachi have a warm and full tone similar to the flute, recorder, or clarinet families of Western instruments. Many of the solo pieces are conceived as aids for meditation, both for listener and player. A number of compositions also draw on distinctive ancient melodies in a way that preserves their unique regional character without undue emphasis on folkloric aspects. (nonesuch)



This CD is re-release of an LP issued in 1991 by Nonesuch. It is probably one of the most known and most sold shakuhachi records in the West. When one looks around for Japanese music, it may be the one found the most often. Kôhachiro Miyata is considered one of the leading shakuhachi players in Japan, along such musicians as Katsuya Yokoyama, Goro Yamaguchi, or Aoki Reibo, for example, as well as being an active composer of works for traditional Japanese instruments. On this CD, he presents us with five of the most known pieces of the Japanese honkyoku repertoire (honkyoku referring to solo pieces for shakuhachi). The one thing that strikes the most about Miyata's playing is the purity and quality of his sound. There are many different styles of playing the shakuhachi, some breathy, some more technical, some with particular playing techniques, generally according to the style of a particular school of playing. Miyata's style is natural, looking for a quality and purity of sound in each and every note. A must! (amg)

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Okkulte Stimmen - Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007


Mieliśmy wątpliwości czy przedstawiać tego typu nagrania. Jest to zbiór przeróżnych nadnaturalnych zjawisk - głosy opętanych, pogrążonych w schizofrenii, egzorcyzmów (łącznie z nagraniami najsłynniejszego opętania Anneliese Michel), osób będących medium i gadających ze znanymi z historii postaciami. Postanowiliśmy udostępnić te doświadczenia, ale z ostrzeżeniem, że nie są one przeznaczone dla ludzi o słabej wrażliwości.

***

The recordings here come from a 3-disc collection called “Okkulte Stimmen – Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007″ compiled by the German label Supposé.

Recording technologies have, since their inception, invited speculation about spiritual presences. We discussed recently in this space how music copied onto x-rays in Soviet Russia have served as a powerful metaphor for, and instantiation of, the association between technology and death.

In the realm of visual representation, spirit photography was something of a cottage industry in the 20th century. At one time, you could hire a photographer to capture hard visual evidence of a deceased love one in a space they were suspected of haunting. The camera, as they say, doesn’t lie. Of course, once people began to understand film technology a little better, and could identify light leaks, smudges, processing imperfections, and double exposures, photography’s spiritual intrigue was rapidly deflated.

The recordings on “Okkulte Stimmen,” however, are eerie in a very different, and perhaps more enduring sense. Even once we “get” them, they remain scary: Very scary, actually

Though we may have theories about the actual nature of possession (delusion, disease) that differ from the exorcist’s, there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this particular item. The exorcism, as an event, certainly occurred, and Anneliese Michel has a tragic story. Hers was the last exorcism sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and she died just a few months after the priest finished, presumably of malnutrition.

Regardless of its true explanation, there is something uncanny about hearing a possessed voice. In the conventional sense of uncanninness, this is a matter of cognitive dissonance caused by an auditory short circuit, of hearing an unexpected emanation from a source we thought we knew well. There are also technological, geographic, and linguistic short circuits – so much about this recording feels alien – that further distance us from any place where explication of the event might be possible. Even if we don’t believe in spirits, this recording confronts us with the fact that someone once did, and quite powerfully at that. Now an unsettling, material remainder of their belief has landed in our laps.

John Lydon sings the last line of PiL’s “Annelisa,” based on Annaliese’s life, in an imitation of her voice. (source)


What would a person interested in psi phenomena give for a film of one of the seances of D. D. Home, Mrs. Piper, or Mrs. Leonard, or of a demonstration by Alexis Didier. Barring the development of a functioning time machine, we will never get such treats, but the extraordinary set of CDs Okkulte Stimmen. Mediale Musik provides almost comparable sonic treasures. The recordings, spanning more than a hundred years, are divided into: trance speech (words spoken by mediums in a presumed altered state of consciousness during a seance), direct voices (speech in a seance without an apparent natural source), precognitive claims, xenoglossy (speaking in a tongue apparently never learned by the speaker), glossolalia ("speaking in tongues" or in an incomprehensible language), paranormal music (reputedly channeled from a dead composer or interpreter), raps and haunting phenomena, and electric voice phenomena. There are also not-easy-to-classify tracks such as that of the final seance in which Houdini's wife finally gave up trying to obtain any credible evidence of his survival through mediums, and various shamanic songs. The CDs contain a short presentation of the recordings in German and English, while a more general introduction is found in the book The Message (see a review of that book in this issue). It would take too much space to review every one of the 64 soundtracks, so I highlight some of the most noteworthy ones.

The first CD contains the trance speech, direct voices, and precognition (although other CDs also contain claims of precognitive information) sections. It begins with recordings from the two children involved in the famous Enfield poltergeist case. The voices sound masculine and spooky, but the statement in the booklet by an unnamed speech specialist that a child could not maintain such imposture for hours without damage to her vocal cords lacks supporting evidence. Tragic and even spookier is the soundtrack in the sad case of Anneliese Michel, whose possession and exorcism culminated in her death (for a general discussion of this case, see Cardena, 2007), demonstrating that some of these experiences are by no means child's play or fraud. In the more benign form of identity alteration known as trance mediumship/channeling, it is fascinating to listen to the playful voice of the Feda control of one of the most researched and successful mediums in history, Mrs. Leonard. In contrast, I hope that medium Leslie Flint did not actually communicate with a discarnate Oscar Wilde, as this would imply that in death Wilde gained in pomposity while misplacing his famous wit. Worth mentioning in this first CD are also the soundtrack of the hyperventilation (up to 300 breaths per minute maintained throughout long sessions) of the medium Rudi Schneider, and a recording of the Nazi-friendly medium Hanussen, who used secret information on how the SA would burn the Reichstag to "precognize" this event, yet did not foresee his own death at the hands of his political masters after his indiscretion.


The second CD includes xenoglossy and glossolalia recordings, although it would be more precise to call them vocal utterances during altered states of consciousness as they include shamanic songs that may not necessarily involve the assumption of a foreign or secret language. In this context, it is a pity that the collection does not include a fragment of the exuberant poems/chants of the Mexican mushroom shaman Maria Sabina (Estrada, 1977). Nonetheless the CD contains some fascinating surprises such as the incantations by the infamous esoterist and "Great Beast" Aleister Crowley, and glossolalic prophecies recorded during Pentecostal services. … (source)



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Arcane Device ‎- Engines of Myth (1988)


Calling himself Arcane Device after his recorded experiments became popular enough to warrant a name, David Myers' exploration into manipulated feedback resulted in several album and cassette-only releases beginning in 1987 and ending in 1994, when he felt the experiment had run its course.

Myers came of age during the era of the Beatles and formed a rock group like hundreds of other teenagers during that time. However, Myers found himself drawn more toward the feedback possibilities of rock music and the various effects boxes associated with electronic music (in the purest sense of the term). After later being influenced by Robert Fripp's Frippertronics and Brian Eno's ambient music, he eventually came round to building a system that would produce feedback to be manipulated by numerous dials, knobs, and buttons, all Frankensteined together from various effects boxes and reshaped. The results sound nothing like feedback as we have come to know it -- depending on Myers' treatments, the sounds produced feel like synthesizers, rhythm boxes, industrial noise, and ambient drones.

In 1987, Myers sent a tape of his first experiments to Chris Cutler, former member of Henry Cow and numerous other music projects, and head of Recommended Records, who then put out the tape as 1988's Engines of Myth. Myers spent the next seven years bouncing from obscure label to obscure label, though Staalplaat now takes care of the CD reissues as does Myers' own homegrown label Pulsewidth. AD's sound evolved and shifted, from near-unbearable noise (1992's Diabolis Ex Machina) to ambient (1994's Envoi in Cumin), though never in a linear fashion. Myers did not keep his Arcane Device projects studio-bound -- the unpredictable nature of the electronics in his setup led to several live appearances and improvisations. Myers' also collaborated with other experimental artists, including PGR on 1990's Fetish (more a shared CD than a collaboration) and Asmus Tietchens (1993's DBL_FDBK and 1996's Speiseleitung). In 1994 Myers took a break from recording, but returned in 1998 with several new projects under his own name. (Ted Mills)


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SpaceFest ! 2014 [5.12.-6.12]


Panie i panowie, 5 i 6 grudnia po raz czwarty wchodzimy na orbitę! Wtedy to w Klubie Żak w Gdańsku odbędzie się kolejna edycja festiwalu SpaceFest! Nadal konsekwentnie promujemy shoegaze, space-rock i wszelkie psychodeliczne odmiany muzyki alternatywnej.

W tym roku twarzą festiwalu jest Snowid – niepokojąca postać z lasu, która wraz z człowiekiem grzybem i goblinami z kosmosu nada całemu wydarzeniu tajemniczą otoczkę mistycyzmu i dostarczy pierwotnej energii.
  
Czeka nas spora dawka koncertowych atrakcji. Niekwestionowaną gwiazdą pierwszego dnia będzie legendarne Silver Apples – pionierzy psychodelicznej elektroniki, na której wychowywali się członkowie takich grup jak Kraftwerk czy Portishead. Simeon, lider zespołu, na domowej roboty syntezatorze, składającym się z 12 oscylatorów i zestawie filtrów dźwiękowych, klawiszy wymontowanych z telegrafu, części odbiorników radiowych, sprzętu laboratoryjnego i różnego rodzaju elektronicznego złomu stworzył dźwięki, o jakich nie śniło się ludzkości pod koniec lat 60-tych – i które do dziś brzmią równie świeżo i odkrywczo.

Silver Apples

Headlinerem drugiego dnia festiwalu będzie brytyjski duet The KVB, którego muzyka to delikatne i ulotne brzmienie shoegaze’u, gdzie na pierwszy plan wybijają się gitarowe pogłosy i minimalistyczna elektroniczna produkcja.

Zagrają dla nas również The Oscillation z Wielkiej Brytanii – lawirujący pomiędzy surowością krautrocka, słodko-gorzką popową melancholią, hipnotyzującymi dronami, noisem i nowofalowymi przesterami, 2kilos&More, których połączenie ambient-elektroniki i post-rocka z niesamowitymi wizualizacjami rzuciło na kolana spacefestową publiczność 2 lata temu. Tym razem wystąpią razem z Black Sifichi – mrocznym mistrzem spoken word, performerem i undergroundowym aktywistą. Ponadto na naszej scenie pojawią się Death Hawks – brodaci fińscy szamani psychodelicznego space-rocka oraz duńska grupa Tales of Murder and Dust reprezentująca skandynawski nurt Psych-noir.

W programie mamy też mocne pozycje z Polski: The Enters – robiące ostatnio ostre zamieszanie w świecie muzyki alternatywnej trio poruszające się po rejonach shoegaze, noise pop i dream pop; bydgoski skład 3moonboys, który wpisał się już na dobre w muzyczny krajobraz polskiego alternatywnego undergroundu i wymyka się wszelkim klasyfikacjom; ponadto efemeryczny projekt Rafała Skoniecznego (znanego z Hotelu Kosmos) o nazwie  Rara  i oczywiście clou programu – Snowid, który wprowadzi nas w międzygwiezdny trans za pomocą elektronicznej muzyki w klimatach pogańsko-okultystyczno-kosmicznych.

Na deser DJ Dr. Switchoff zaserwuje eklektyczne sety DJ-skie z tym, co najlepsze i najgorsze w dziwnej muzyce z całego świata, wykorzystując zepsuty sprzęt hi-fi, radzieckie syntezatory analogowe, nagrania terenowe czy niezidentyfikowane obiekty dźwiękowe.

Death Hawks

Tradycyjnie już, część koncertową poprzedzą próby Pure Phase Ensemble – grupy utworzonej specjalnie na potrzeby festiwalu. Muzycy będą wspólnie pracować przez tydzień w CEA Łaźnia w Nowym Porcie – i inspirować się portowymi pejzażami tej gdańskiej dzielnicy. Nie zabraknie z pewnością ścian gitar i przesterów za sprawą wokalisty i gitarzysty legendarnego, shoegaze’owego zespołu Ride – Marka Gardenera, który w tym roku zostanie liderem PPE. Do składu grupy dołączą też m.in. muzycy zespołów Hatifnats, Wilga czy Cisza nocna. Nie zabraknie również Raya Dickaty, znanego m.in. ze współpracy z PJ Harvey czy Spiritualized oraz Karola Schwarza z Nasiono Records, którzy od samego początku dbają o skoordynowanie i muzyczną spójność projektu PPE. Efekty pracy zespołu usłyszymy na koncercie 6 grudnia, a występ zostanie zarejestrowany i wydany na płycie w 2015 roku.

Warto więc zarezerwować czas w pierwszy weekend grudnia, wybrać się na SpaceFest! i razem z zaproszonymi artystami przeżyć niepowtarzalną podróż, nie tylko w czasie, ale także, a może przede wszystkim, w przestrzeni. Zapraszamy na muzyczne grzybobranie!

PROGRAM KONCERTÓW (CONCERT SCHEDULE)

5 grudnia 2014 | start 19:00 (5 December 2014 | start at 7.00 pm)

Silver Apples (US)
The Oscillation (UK)
2kilos &More + Black Sifichi (FR/US)
Death Hawks (FIN)
3moonboys (PL)
Rara (PL)
+
DJ Adam Czajkowski (PL)
DJ Dr.Switchoff (RU)


6 grudnia 2014 | start 19:00 (6 December 2014 | start at 7.00 pm)

The KVB (UK)
Pure Phase Ensemble (with Mark Gardener) (UK/PL)
Tales of Murder and Dust (DK)
The Enters (PL)
Snowid (PL)
+
DJ Adam Czajkowski (PL)
DJ Dr.Switchoff (RU)

Więcej informacji na temat festiwalu można znaleźć na stronie www.spacefest.pl

Bilety do nabycia w sieci Eventim, Soundrive oraz w kasie Klubu Żak
Bilety jednodniowe: 30-40zł / karnety: 50-70zł

Koordynatorzy festiwalu: Anna Szynwelska i Karol Schwarz (Nasiono) | Kontakt: love@spacefest.pl
Kontakt dla prasy: Radosław Jachimowicz | press@spacefest.pl | +48 513 930 841

Snowid

Ladies and Gentlemen, on 5 and 6 December we are entering the orbit for the fourth time! Another edition of SpaceFest! is going to take place at Żak Club in Gdańsk. We are still promoting shoegaze, space-rock and all psychedelic shades of alternative music. This year, the face of the festival is Snowid: an unsettling figure from the Polish woods. With his sidekick, the mushroom man, and goblins from space, they are going to infuse the whole event with mystery, mysticism and primeval energy.
  
We are in for a dose of live delicacies. The undisputed highlight of the first day is the legendary Silver Apples: pioneers of psychedelic electronic music, which influenced the likes of Kraftwerk or Portishead. Simeon, the band’s leader, used a homemade synthesizer consisting of 12 oscillators and an assortment of sound filters, telegraph keys, radio parts, lab gear and a variety of second hand electronic junk to create sounds humanity didn’t even dream of in the late 1960s – and which still sound fresh and innovative today.

 The Oscillation

The headliner of the second day of the festival is the British duo The KVB, whose delicate and ephemeral shoegaze sound is marked by reverb-soaked guitars and minimalist electronic production.
We will also see UK’s The Oscillation, who are veering between krautrock edginess and bittersweet pop melancholia, droning medicated tones and noise-driven no wave fuzz, and 2kilos&More, whose blend of ambient-electronica and post-rock with amazing visuals brought our audience to their knees two years ago. This time they are going to perform with Black Sifichi: the dark master of spoken word, performer and underground activist. Other bands include Death Hawks: bearded shamans of psychedelic space-rock from Finland and Danes from Tales of Murder and Dust representing Scandinavian Psych-noir.

The line-up also showcases some gems from Poland: The Enters – a shoegaze/noise pop/dream pop trio, who are the latest rave of the alternative music world; 3moonboys from Bydgoszcz, who have already made a name for themselves in the music landscape of Polish alternative underground and so far managed to avoid being pigeonholed; plus an ephemeral solo project of Rafał Skonieczny (known from Hotel Kosmos) dubbed Rara and, of course, our highlight: Snowid, whose pagan-occult-cosmic electronic sounds are bound to bring us into a state of interstellar trance.

Hungry for more? For dessert, Dr Switchoff will serve us his eclectic DJ sets showcasing the best and worst in weird music from all over the world, using broken hi-fi equipment, analogue Soviet synths, field recordings and unidentified sound objects.

 The KVB

The concert part of the festival will traditionally be preceded by rehearsals of Pure Phase Ensemble, a group created especially for SpaceFest. For a week, the musicians are going to work together at Łaźnia Centre for Art Education in Nowy Port and seek inspiration in the port landscape of this district of Gdańsk. This year, we are bound to hear walls of guitars and distortions on account of the singer/guitarist of the legendary shoegaze band Ride, Mark Gardener, who will be the frontman of PPE4. The ensemble is also going to feature musicians from such bands as Hatifnats, Wilga or Cisza nocna. The line-up will be completed by Ray DIckaty, known i.a. from his cooperation with PJ Harvey or Spiritualized, and Karol Schwarz from Nasiono Records, both of whom have been responsible for the coordination and musical cohesion of the PPE project from the very outset. We are going to hear the results of the rehearsals live on 6 December and the performance is going to be recorded and released on CD in 2015.

Jot down the first weekend of December and visit SpaceFest! to embark on a unique journey together with the invited guests, a journey not just through time, but also – perhaps most importantly – through space. Come and pick music mushrooms with us!

For more information on the festival, go to www.spacefest.pl

Tickets are available at Eventim and Soundrive outlets and at Żak Club
One-day tickets: PLN 30-40 / festival passes: PLN 50-70

Festival coordinators: Anna Szynwelska and Karol Schwarz (Nasiono) | Contact: love@spacefest.pl
Press: Radosław Jachimowicz | press@spacefest.pl | +48 513 930 841
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Iron Butterfly - Live at the Galaxy (1967)


This album has been dug out of the vaults some place not yet known and was most likely done from a late ’60s sound board/mixer or even a table top reel-to-reel recorder. With that said, the quality reflects that recording procedure and the time frame. The actual recording date was November 9, 1967. Although this show has been around a number of years as a full blown bootleg this is its first release as a true recording with all the pomp and circumstance it really deserves.

The album is dirty, grimy and heavy…everything we have come to expect and love about Iron Butterfly. It has that high quality bootleg feel, but don’t let that fool you. It feels live and truly gives you the aural experience of a late ‘60s club concert! You can almost smell the reefer wafting through the air and clink of glasses and bottles in between songs. Don’t expect the quality of your favorite boy band’s new release though or you’ll be absolutely disappointed.

This set encompasses 6 songs from their 1st album, “Heavy” which hadn’t been released yet. You can hear the future being born in these 6 songs. “Iron Butterfly Theme” is here in still an unpolished state but still very recognizable and moving. Many of the songs will cause you to listen to them several times to understand how much more work went into them to bring them to the final form we saw upon release of the “Heavy” album.


Even more amazing is the fact 3 songs found here weren’t released until their 3rd album, “Ball”, which went to #3 position on the USA music charts in 1969. That’s a full 2 years after they recorded them in this performance. You may have to listen close to recognize them but the development will stun you.

There are also 3, still unreleased songs, in this set list. They are “It’s Up To You”, Gloomy Day To Remember” and “Evil Temptation”. One has to wonder why they didn’t spend more time to polish and complete them at some point. I will go out on a limb and speculate that maybe the large amount of band member changes did not let that happen. That is unfortunate for Iron Butterfly fans around the world.

With all this said this is not an album for your typical radio listener or non-rock fan. What this album is though is a historical account of one of rock’s most famous and favorite bands. If you are a Iron Butterfly collector, music history aficionado or just someone who is interested in the growth of your favorite Iron Butterfly tune than this is a MUST HAVE ALBUM for you. I found it to be a great listen and will add it to my music collection when the vinyl version is released on June 10, 2014. The CD version is being released on May 27, 2014 for those of you who can’t wait for the vinyl. All I can say is…we miss you Iron Butterfly!



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Tentacle - The Angel Of Death (1971)


Excelent and obscure band of Heavy Psych from Scotland. Psychedelia mixed with progressive elements from Scotland to the English (not Scottish) folk. Tentacle unknown band from Scotland, produced, led by Jim West… manager groups Bodkin and Soho Orange….all these bands have something in common…

They are Scottish,the recordings were made at the turn… 1971/72,all were produced by Jim West Originally recorded at Central Scotland Studios at Falkirk in 1970/1971. Tentacle are playing fine guitar rock on the high level similar to Morly Grey, Dark, Janus,T.2.

Tentacle were a little known psych/hard rock band from Scotland that managed to eke out one album in their day, Angel of Death released in 1971. This rare German CD contains, built…”Wonderfully morose scottish rock with some flowery, folk-derived, electric guitar work and heavy bits that don’t get too loutish. Musically it is very close to T2 and Bachdenkel (especially the 20-minute suite), Opened up with oddly minimalistic, almost hypnotic “My Destiny – My Faith” running for twenty minutes the album creates eerie but compelling atmosphere begins with two guitars in harmony funeral almost every note an odor of death in an emotional atmosphere, folk, voice gives a melancholy and together they create an intimate piece, twenty minutes of paralysis where no tricks, just passion for the instruments despite what some are easier than it sounds, because in essence we are dealing with an unfinished project, which in the particular sound reminds me of Janus and the great atmosphere of its main theme:”Gravedigger”…


So, that cadaverous friend who wants to see realized their dreams in the warm breasts of a woman can only seduced knees while she wanton indifference, shy and despotic shown unfathomable. That is the comedy between life and death, enjoy it! It is one of those albums that at first don’t seem vibrant but they haunt you for a long while after the last song is over…ends with a 30-second Epitaph. Between them are three songs are more psychedelic than close to progressive is a morose and dynamic album with epic, songs, just as you start to grow a bit weary of the vibes,. It is a pity that it takes just 37:46.

Angel of Death is a morose and dynamic album with epic, songs, just as you start to grow a bit weary of the vibes, The Angel of Death is a strange one, the sound is very good…Yeah i’d go as far as saying 1971 was the greatest year of all-time for music never to be matched before & definitely after thoughts on this Tentacle gem…five track: riff/melody stuck in my head. (source)



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Ennio Morricone - Veruschka (1971) [OST]


Większość czytelników widziała zapewne film Antonioniego "Powiększenie" (Blow Up). Jest tam kilka scen z ikoną świata mody końca lat sześćdziesiątych - Veruschką, które należą do jednych z najbardziej znanych w historii kina i nic dziwnego. Zapadają w pamięć ponieważ są swoistym dziełem sztuki i nie chodzi li tylko o urodę modelki. Być może jest wiele urokliwych modelek - nie znam się na tym. Sedno tkwi nie w materiale, ale w jakich "rękach" się znajdzie. A Veruschka znalazła się w rękach nie byle kogo - Antonioni, Morricone i inni. Potrafili oni wydobyć jakąś niesamowitą plastyczność urody swojej modelki i wkomponować to w swoje dzieła. W nich własnie Varuschka wciąż żyje.


Vera (Veruschka) Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff urodziła się 14 maja 1939 w Królewcu (Kaliningrad) w rodzinie szlacheckiej pochodzącej z Prus Wschodnich. Jej ojciec, hrabia Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort, był zaangażowany w nieudany zamach na Hitlera 20 lipca 1944 w Wilczym Szańcu i został stracony. Matka trafiła do obozu pracy.Po wojnie dorastała z matką i trzema siostrami w obozach dla uchodźców i u znajomych. W latach 60. dzięki wzrostowi 1.86cm zaczęła robić karierę fotomodelki we Florencji pod imieniem Veruschka. Została pierwszą niemiecką "supermodelką".Jej filmowym debiutem był film z 1966 w reżyserii Michelangelo Antonioniego Powiększenie, w którym zagrała modelkę pod swoim pseudonimem. Veruschka była chyba pierwszą modelką, którą fotografowano z "bodypaintingiem". Prezentowane zdjęcia to powrót do korzeni. Przepiękna kobieta umiejąca oddać na zdjęciach swoją osobowość.


Veruschka in Africa with Peter Beard



Veruschka was born in 1939 in East Prussia as Countess Vera Gottliebe Anna von Lehndorff-Steinort. For a short time, she enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle residing in East Prussia in a 100-room house on an enormous estate that had been in her family for centuries. Her mother was the former Countess Gottliebe von Kalnein (b. 1913). Her father was a German nobleman and army reserve officer who became a key member of the German Resistance after witnessing Jewish children being beaten and killed.



Transfigurations

When Veruschka was five years old, Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort was executed for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the July 20 Plot. After his death, the remaining family members spent their times in labor camps until the end of World War II. By the end of the war, her family was left homeless. As a young girl, she attended 13 schools. Her traumatic childhood experiences later triggered heavy depression in 1974. She has three sisters: Marie Eleanore "Nona" (b. 1937, married Jan van Haeften and Wolf Siegfried Wagner, son of Wieland Wagner and grandson of composer Richard Wagner), Gabriele (b. 1942, married Armin, Edler Herr und Freiherr von Plotho), and Katharina (b. 1944, married Henrik Kappelhoff-Wulff).


She studied art in Hamburg and then moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ugo Mulas and became a full-time model. Back then tall models were not considered desirable in Paris, but there she met Eileen Ford, head of the prestigious Ford Modeling Agency. In 1961, she moved to New York City, but she did not score any bookings. To stand out, she returned to Munich and told people that she was really from Russia and changed her name to create a mysterious persona, which earned her many bookings. She had also garnered attention when she made a brief yet powerful five minute appearance in the cult film Blowup by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1966 (Premiere named the scene the sexiest scene in film history despite the fact that there was no nudity).


In the same year, she did her first shoot wearing nothing but body paint, which she would continue to do for years. She once worked with Salvador Dalí and photographer Peter Beard, who took her to Kenya, where she painted herself with black shoe polish to resemble surreal plants and animals in an attempt to "go native". At her peak, she earned as much as $10,000 a day.

In 1975, however, she departed from the fashion industry due to disagreements with Grace Mirabella, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue, who wanted to change her image to make it more relatable and approachable to average women. In 1985, she entered the art world, putting on a body-painting show in Tribeca; on her naked body, she was painted with different outfits transforming her into wild animals and several archetypes, such as film stars, dandies, gangsters, and dirty old men. Occasionally, she still appears on catwalks, for example, as a guest model in the Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2000 in Australia. (wikipedia)
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Parliament - Osmium (1970)


The first Parliament album as such was a mixed-up mess of an affair — but would anyone expect anything less? The overall sound is much more Funkadelic than later Parliament, if with a somewhat more accessible feel. Things get going with an appropriately leering start, thanks to "I Call My Baby Pussycat," which makes something like "What's New, Pussycat?" seem like innocent, chaste conversation. After a stripped-down start, things explode into a full-on funk strut with heavy-duty guitar and slamming drums setting the way, while the singers sound like they're tripping without losing the soul — sudden music dropouts, vocal cut-ins, volume level tweaks, and more add to the off-kilter feeling. Osmium's sound progresses from there — it's funk's fire combined with a studio freedom that feels like a blueprint for the future. Bernie Worrell's keyboard abilities are already clear, whether he's trying for hotel lounge jams or full freakiness; similarly, Eddie Hazel is clearly finding his own epic stoned zone to peel out some amazing solos at the drop of a hat. As for the subject matter and end results — who else but this crew could have come up with the trash-talking, yodeling twang of "Little Ol' Country Boy" in 1970 and still made it funky with all the steel guitar? Other fun times include the piano and vocal-into-full-band goofy romantic romp of "My Automobile" and "Funky Woman," where over a heavy groove (and goofy Worrell break) the titular character lives with the consequence of her stank: "She hung them in the air/The air said this ain't fair!" Amidst all the nuttiness, there are some perhaps surprising depths — consider "Oh Lord, Why Lord/Prayer," which might almost be too pretty for its own good (Worrell's harpsichord almost verges on the sickly sweet) but still has some lovely gospel choir singing and heartfelt lyrics.




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The Joneses - Criminal History (2000)


The Joneses were a punk rock band from Southern California. Founded in 1981 by guitarist and singer Jeff Drake, the band included numerous players over the years. The incarnation of the Joneses that was voted "Best Live Band" in the 1984 L.A. Weekly Reader's Poll included, in addition to Drake, three ex-Mau-Mau's, Scott Franklin (the Cramps), Paul Black (L.A.Guns), and Johnnie Sage (Christian Death).

The Joneses first seven-inch, 45 rpm single was Criminals in My Car b/w Jonestown. They next released a pair of songs, Graveyard Rock and Pillbox, on the 1982 BYO Records compilation, Someone Got Their Head Kicked In. The EP Criminals was the Joneses next released recording. Hell Comes to Your House, Volume 2, included the three Joneses tracks: I'm Bad, She's So Filthy, Black Cat Bone. Keeping Up With the Joneses, was released by Doctor Dream Records in 1986. Criminal History, released by Sympathy for the Record Industry in February 2000, is a 20 track retrospective of the Joneses recorded material.


Jeff Drake - vocals, guitar
Steve Houston - vocals, guitar
Steve Olson - vocals, bass guitar
Rhys Williams - guitar
Greg Kuehn - piano
Mitch Dean - drums

One of the last of the great "loud and snotty" REAL trashy glam rock'n'roll bands who WERE 100% authentic were Hollywood's Joneses. The Joneses really did have that raunchy, fifties rhythm and blues stilletto appeal that always informed the REAL Johnny Thunders. Whiney, brattish, sneering vocals, yearning high-lonesome for another fix, scuzzy dueling guitars shades of the greats, horny piano pounding worthy of Jerry Lee or Little Richard, catchy choruses that you could never be certain about-was he singin' about dope or chicks? Either/both/probably dope, mostly.Jeff Drake was a total white Chuck Berry/Hank Williams Sr./Johnny Thunders style street fightin' dandy. A diamond geezer. A Gentleman Gangster of the Old West. The Genuine Article. Born in Anaheim, and raised in Merced, California, Jeff absorbed a steady stream of Elvis and country music from his Pa and later dug the stomping British glam he heard on the radio. Jeff Drake's scorchin' brand of rhinestone junkie cowpunk has been an influence on not only all them lousy Sunset Strip bands who copped the whole cowboy glam and creepers look from him and the Clash and Andy McCoy and Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Keith Richards and Gram Parsons, but his look and sound have also left their whine-stain on loads of the best underground rock bands we got left out here in the shanties of Jonestown. Bands like American Heartbreak and the Dragons. The Chamber Strings and the Saviors.Slow Motorcade and New Romantics. From the Hangmen to the Humpers. A lost generation of FLASH METAL OUTLAWS all owe a toast to the original "rocknroll bankrobber", JEFF DRAKE and his ragged lot of scarvey ramblin' men.


THE HOLLYWOOD JONESES first made their splash in the early eighties by appearing on some much-beloved hardcore punk compilations and by being the stand-out track. Their seemingly ill-conceived appearances alongside all the testosterone crazed hardcore surfer bands was appropriate in a way, however, because the early 80's Orange Co. punk scene nurtured Jeff's glitterbilly revival right alongside all the Thrasher aggression skatepunk bands, and Drake goes back like a rocking chair with cats like Duane Peters and Steve Olson. After getting the sack from the purist Aristocats ("Not Howdy Doody enough") Drake put together the early Joneses with people like Olson and Ron Emory (T.S.O.L.) and Paul "Mars" Black (Mau-Maus, L.A. Guns)and developed a rabid club following playing with groups like Social Distortion, TSOL, and the Blasters. They were always going through line-up changes with former members returning to the group from time to time, and their pianist going off to fame and fortune with Johnny Rotten and Bob Dylan. Chicks, pills, booze,drugs, family feuds, all the usual perils of rock'n'roll decadence. Danny Sugarman managed 'em for awhile but everybody was deep into heroin and all the major labels were "gun-shy", in spite of starting to court all the fake junkie glam rock "guns" bands. All their records are essential, collectors item, must-own artifacts, with singles fetching $75 and I know Bleeker Bob's probably still got "Keeping Up With THE JONESES" in a plastic sleeve on the wall for like $150. Even their earliest songs like "Pillbox" and "Criminals" and "She's So Filthy" still get covered by greasy kid punk bands from coast to coast. Though widely renowned for their pulse-hastening rave-up originals, the JONESES also always had exquisite taste in covers: "Chip Away". "Crocodile Rock". "Your Cheatin' Heart". and J.D.'s been threatening to record a Bowie "Pin-Ups" style cover record for years now if Long Gone John from Sympathy can ever pry his lips way from Jack White's ass long enough to pony-up some of that precious studio-time. (source: sleazegrinder.com)
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Iva Bittová & Bang on a Can - Elida (2005)


Words like "approachable" and "engaging" are rarely invoked when describing the work of so-called avant-garde musicians, and it sometimes seems true that avant experimentalists bend over backwards to push mainstream listeners away rather than welcome them. Not so Iva Bittová, a composer, violinist, and vocalist who proves that the avant-garde can be broadly appealing without compromising its adventurous spirit. On Elida, Bittová succeeds in humanizing the Bang on a Can All-Stars, that collective of New Yorkers often primarily noted for mind-boggling technical skills when tackling the formidable minimalist and post-minimalist works of modern composers like Louis Andriessen and the Bang on a Can collective's own Michael Gordon. Here, a six-piece incarnation of the All-Stars is her backing band, and the musicians prove to be ideally suited to the task, a dose of Bittová's Eastern European folk, chamber music, and cabaret proving the ideal formula to reveal their softer and more intimate sides. That is not to suggest that the All-Stars have lost their edge here, or that Bittová's unbridled exuberance is not on full display. Thankfully, Bittová's singing (in her native Czech) remains far from the plastic posturing of the typical mid-2000s pop diva, yet her catalog of wild vocal techniques is not avant-garde for the sake of being avant-garde -- it seems a natural and effortless outgrowth of her music's core melodies and rhythms and the artfully yearning images painted by her lyricists (Richard Müller, Vladimír Václavek, and Vera Chase).

The album follows a thoughtful and well-conceived trajectory, with Bittová's shouting, babbling, and skittering vocals making an early entrance on "Malíri V Parízi" (Painters in Paris) but seeming to slide gracefully into a mature beauty before the listener's ears as the album progresses, although she never completely abandons her childlike playful qualities. Likewise, her violin assumes increasing prominence as Elida's initial cabaret atmosphere (with Lisa Moore's wonderful pianisms on full display) makes way for a fuller -- yet often delicate and understated -- ensemble sound. Bittová dips into idiosyncratic yet compelling jazz-like scatting on "Bolís Me, Lásko" (You're Hurting Me Babe), while the two-part "Zapíshej" (Whistle), an album highlight, displays her wonderful talents in synchronous singing and violin playing, both in the uptempo folk dance-like opening and the piece's centerpiece, a beautiful extended 5/4 vamp taken at a measured pace, colored by a mysterious guitar motif, driven by subtle bass and brushed drums, and embellished with pizzicato strings. Gypsy flavors can be heard in both "Zapíshej" and "Hopáhop Tálitá," the album's two lengthiest pieces, particularly in Evan Ziporyn's clarinet lines, and one also hears echoes of Tom Cora in Wendy Sutter's cello on the title track, which flirts with avant European folk-rock and may have certain listeners recalling Nimal or Skeleton Crew (an impression enhanced by some Fred Frith-like guitar from Mark Stewart, a member of Frith's Guitar Quartet). Elida is an essential release in Iva Bittová's catalog, and a fine introduction to her music for those unfamiliar with her. And it's a worthy Bang on a Can All-Stars entry, too, particularly if you're not in a mood for minimalism. (amg)

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The Gun Club - Fire of Love (1981)


For the Love of Jeffrey
by Jay Hinman
(January 2002)

Jeffrey Lee Pierce - reggae enthusiast, heroin addict, and former president of the Blondie fan club - upheld the confident predictions of many by dying a lonely and fairly depressing death over four years ago, on March 31st, 1997. Pierce's Johnny Thunders-esque holdout in the face of self-wrought bodily deterioration was oddly admirable, yet in no way was the man mistaken for a hero for it. He expired of a brain hemorrhage at a relative's house in Utah, HIV-positive and sick with hepatitis after untold years of drug use, alcoholism and the usual other suspects. Why this event mattered much to anyone lay most prominently in a fantastic record his band The Gun Club recorded 16 years earlier, the masterful Fire Of Love. Listening to that record hammers home a particularly visionary and fierce moment in time when The Gun Club took the raw, dripping meat of shopworn delta blues and infused it with the energy and fire of the Los Angeles punk rock scene. I thought I'd take a stab at conveying Fire Of Love's kick-ass timelessness for those who just might be unaware.

The independent rock music stage in L.A. at the time was perhaps the finest local scene in the city's - quite arguably rock and roll's - history. Three to four dozen bands and artists were busting paradigms, genres, skulls, what have you, with original, "anti-parent", anti-Hollywood-machine rock and roll. From the aural hardcore assault of Black Flag to the infernal howl of The Flesh Eaters, Los Angelino rock circa 1980-1982 was as exciting and raw as it came. Out of an early musical start as Creeping Ritual in 1979 grew a bleary-eyed group of heavy drinkers and blues fans, soon to be renamed the Gun Club. They were comprised of the white-hot rhythm section of Rob Ritter and Terry Graham, wailing slide guitarist Ward Dotson, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce on vocals and occasional slide guitar. These men were already fixtures on the burgeoning scene - Ritter and Graham had been in one of the gnarliest, eat-you-alive first-wave punk bands, The Bags, and Pierce was already a notorious drunk, exhibitionist, poet and fanboy. The Gun Club were quickly a dangerous new spoke on the spinning wheel of dynamic LA alt-culture.

By 1980, Jeffrey Lee - "Ramblin'" Jeffrey Lee to the easily captivated European music press - had moved beyond his Blondie infatuations and into a deep reverence for Mississippi delta blues. The sounds of Son House, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and other giants were, as we know, co-opted by legions of rock-n-rollers and folkies beginning in the 1960's. The Gun Club paid more than passing homage, however -- they wholeheartedly swiped complete riffs, words and attitude from the masters. Pierce participated in the great blues singer tradition by cobbling together distinct lines from other people's songs to create new ones.

Outright verse theft was indeed encouraged back in the day -- the better to carry on the oral tradition. Snatches of Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson can be heard throughout the two sides of Fire Of Love. This debut LP was hotly anticipated throughout lowbrow Los Angeles upon its release, as the band had acquired an early reputation for cathartic, tear-'em-up live performances. Main Flesh Eater Chris D. took to releasing this fine platter on his own vanity subsidiary of Slash, Ruby Records.


What makes Fire Of Love such a brilliant listen long after its time is the fact that this blatant homage to the blues was amplified, energized and kicked into overdrive - yet not in the way that, say, The Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin did it, but in a new style that combined the ghostliness of the original model with a FAST, unwound and supremely energetic beat. The band had a studio magic that was tight & controlled in all the right places, yet loose and wild as a general rule. Ward Dotson joined Greg Ginn and Karl Precoda as one of LA's early '80's gutter-circuit guitar heroes, with each man bringing a totally unique slant to his instrument. Dotson attacked the guitar with each rise in tempo, all the while keeping the sound harmonious with the desired mood. Usually this mood was pretty bleak (but crazed), and harkened to moonlit, fevered nights that spoke of sex, voodoo and imminent violence. His guitar pinnacle is on the album's second track, "Preaching The Blues". Dotson's histrionics sputter and flame out of control, only to be reigned in and tamed by the slide jammed onto his middle finger. And when Pierce plays his rare slide over a berserk Dotson riff, the effect is pretty much a yin-and-yang point-counterpoint. Quite a sound, and you didn't have to be an unabashed blues hound or a drunken punker to get it.

Fire Of Love has three songs in particular that will always be among my all-time favorites: "Sex Beat", "She's Like Heroin To Me" and "For The Love Of Ivy". They all reside on the LP's first side, though the second side is under no circumstances a slouch. Fire Of Love kicks off with "Sex Beat" -- for most folks this is the Gun Club's most recognizable number, and would have been their "Satisfaction" had they made it to reunion tours 20 or 25 years on. Now, some people have always given poor Jeffrey Lee a hard time for his lyrics, not to mention the fact that he often came across as a fat, sweaty drunk. I won't dispute the latter, nor will I go to great lengths to defend him on the former. However, on Fire Of Love Jeff was immensely successful at transmitting the dark, twisted roots of evil without pasting them to his sleeve like a bad Greil Marcus essay. "Sex Beat" quite simply combines an aggressive, convoluted sexuality with an homage to "the devil's music": rock and roll, or alternately, blues. In the end, the song says, life comes down to a pair of basics: fucking and dancing (with emphasis on the former). Pierce at times had his lyrics questioned on what now seems laughable 1980s P.C. grounds ­ i.e., he uses the word 'nigger' several times, albeit in the guise of a deranged Southern evangelical straight from a Flannery O'Connor story. Given the historical, sometimes creepy and violent context of these songs, I think it's fair to say this blues-obsessed reggae lover had no beef with his African-American brothers. Unlike others of his time, you can actually understand the words Pierce sings, to the point where one could probably do a decent job transcribing the lyrics verbatim. Try that with Chris D. or Dez Cadena!


There was also the great, original LP cover art of three bizarre-looking Africans. This gorgeous initial pink, black & green cover was jettisoned when the LP was re-released (by Blondie's vanity label "Animal") in favor of an exceptionally dull "fire" motif. Animal Records even unloaded the terrific Judith Bell bottle drawings on the record's back cover, each of which beautifully captures the essence of the particular songs they represent. This overall packaging of the original Fire Of Love complements the record perfectly, and makes the LP that much more special.

"She's Like Heroin To Me" was my personal introduction to this band, and it is one of the hellfire classics of this era. Everything comes together in this 2:33 masterpiece, a paean to a wayward woman sprinkled with a few choice drug double-entendres. This is followed by the near-epic "For The Love Of Ivy", a fetishistic salute to fellow traveler Poison Ivy of The Cramps. (Kid Congo Powers, who wrote the song with Pierce, was playing in The Cramps at or around this time, and came full circle by playing in later versions of The Gun Club). The closing line "I was all dressed up like Elvis from HELL" - a line which really has nothing to do with the rest of the song - can be assumed to be a tip o' the bottle to Lux Interior as well. The side closes with the rave-up "Fire Spirit," which charges ferociously through a dirty 60's punk riff by way of bo-weevil blues. Turn the disc over, and you've got five more of the same, including a great take on the spooky Tommy Johnson blues, "Cool Drink Of Water" (popularized, in a manner of speaking, by Howlin' Wolf).

No discussion of this fine platter would be complete without mentioned the engineering feats of Pat Burnette. This man wielded his Quad-Teck studios like a weapon, and mastered some of the greatest sides in LA music history. Listen to classics like the Germs' G.I. or the Flesh Eaters' A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die, and you'll hear pure fullness of sound and the raw, hot throb of records that were made to stand the test of time. Burnette somehow engineered the music to leap right off of the vinyl and into your face. Fire Of Love sounds like a 45rpm disco 12", yet plays at a normal 33+ revolutions and clocks in at roughly forty purifying minutes. It would be a shame if this record lived on only in the Trouser Press New Wave Record Guide or if it were allowed to totally lapse out of print. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was far from a visionary or even a particularly outstanding musician, but he had the cajones to lead this fantastic band through the recording of an album of timelessly roughshod and unruly punk-blues, perhaps the first -- and easily the best -- of its kind. Let's give the devil his due for this one, and ask him to take real good care of Jeffrey. (source)
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Jana Winderen - Energy Field (2010)


Artystka wykształcona w Goldsmiths College w Londynie (wydział sztuk pięknych) oraz na Uniwersytecie Oslo (chemia i matematyka). Od 1993 roku pracuje jako artystka, kuratorka i producentka. Obecnie mieszka i pracuje w Oslo. Jana Winderen bada „ukryte” za pośrednictwem najnowszych technologii – jej praca odsłania złożoność i dziwność niewidzialnego, ukrytego świata. Wydobywa na powierzchnię topografię dźwiękową oceanów i głębi szczelin lodowych. Zajmuje się wyszukiwaniem i ujawnianiem dźwięków z ukrytych źródeł, zarówno niesłyszalnych dla ludzkiego ucha, jak i dźwięków miejsc i stworzeń, do których trudno dotrzeć. (soundplay)



Jana Winderen is an artist educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics and chemistry from the University in Oslo. Since 1993 she has worked as an artist, curator and producer. She currently lives and works in Oslo.

Jana Winderen researches the hidden depths with the latest technology; her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of ice crevasses is brought to the surface. She is concerned with finding and revealing sounds from hidden sources, like blind field recording. (janawinderen)

The recordings were made on field trips to the Barents Sea (north of Norway and Russia), Greenland and Norway, deep in crevasses of glaciers, in fjords and in the open ocean. These elements are then edited and layered into a powerful descriptive soundscape. The open spaces of Greenland, northern winds, ravens and dogs in an icy landscape provide the setting for these haunting but dynamic pieces. Sounds of crustaceans, fish such as cod, haddock, herring and pollock recorded as they are hunting, calling for a mate or orientating themselves in their environment, are all included in the mix. The result is a powerful, mesmeric journey into the unseen audio world of the frozen north. (touchshop)

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The Hellcats (1967) [OST]


Hellcats is a showcase for all-out biker debauchery...and it delivers! Seriously, if you like extended scenes of outlaw bikers and their chicks getting drunk and stoned, dancing, and being violent and gross, this is your film! There's a biker chick named Candy Cave...very subtle!

The Hellcats are a drug-dealing biker gang who work for the mob moving drugs from Mexico to the USA. The plot, so to speak, involves a Vietnam veteran and a hippie chick who infiltrate a biker gang to avenge the killing of the veteran's cop brother. The chick is the dead brother's fiancée.

While in a biker bar (where else?) the vet convinces them that he's a real biker, so the gang lets him join...just in time to participate in a long freak out session. For the next ten minutes, it's nothing but drunken debauchery as the Hellcats drink beer, dance and spray beer on each other, dance some more and laugh at a gang member flipping out on bad acid.

Beer soaks every frame of this sequence, while the camera is jerked in and out in that good old-fashioned 60's "freak out" style. Amidst the mayhem, the vet starts making out with his brother's fiancée.

The soundtrack is terrific and bizarre! Sometimes it's cool rat pack jazz, other times it invokes menacing drama. But the coolest is the 60s fuzz-bubblegum-pop-rock music by two groups; Davy Jones and the Dolphins who perform "Hellcats, "Mass Confusion," and "I Can't Take A Chance" and Somebody's Children who perform "I'm Up" and "Marionettes." Ross Hagen, Dee Duffy, Sharyn Kinzie, Del 'Sonny' West, Robert F. Slatzer, Tony Lorea, Eric Lidberg, Shannon Summers, Bro Beck, Diane Ryder, Nick Raymond, Hildegard Wendt. (source)




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Xenis Emputae Travelling Band - A Prism for Annwn (2006)



Misty mountain landscapes, ancient forests, dolmens, rune stones, and primordial burial mounds: those are the images that come to mind while listening to Xenis Emputae Travelling Band. 

Xenis Emputae Travelling Band, a one man project by Phil Legard, makes psychedelic ambient with a streak of folk. It's precisely these folk influences, which are represented by the use of flute, string instruments, pipes and pieces of song, that make the music so special. Xenis Emputae Travelling Band therefore gives off a warm feeling, and expresses an organic nature mysticism, rather than a cold, empty darkness, as is often the case with other (dark) ambient artists. Another special element is that all songs are linked to locations in the countryside. Phil often travels through Britain, composing the songs in various inspiring places.

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Can - Canaxis 5 Studio Demo Tapes (1968-1973)


This is one you have to find, people. It’s a collection of Can’s studio demo tapes, all of which were unreleased until this monster came along. The first three tracks feature Damo Suzuki on vocals, and tracks four through seven feature Malcolm Mooney on vocals. These are the outtakes from the band’s first album, Monster Movie. Included on this collection is an extended version of “Father Cannot Yell” that will blow your mind.

Damo Suzuki: vocals (1-3)
Malcolm Mooney: vocals (4-7)
Holger Czukay
Michael Karoli
Jaki Liebezeit
Irmin Schmidt


Can was a German experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany, in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first krautrock groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.

Can constructed their music largely through collective spontaneous composition – which the band differentiated from improvisation in the jazz sense – SaMpling themselves in the studio and editing down the results; bassist/chief engineer Holger Czukay referred to Can's live and studio performances as "instant compositions". They had occasional commercial success, with singles such as "Spoon" and "I Want More" reaching national singles charts. Through albums such as Monster Movie (1969), Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Future Days (1973), the band exerted a considerable influence on avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, new wave and electronic music. (wikipedia)


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Endless Boogie - The Skinless Ogress Revolution, Which Feeds On Human Sacrifice (2011)


Skinless Ogress Revolution' was a 100 copy edition CD Jesper hand made to sell at gigs for a west coast tour, taken from the huge pile of tapes we've made at rehearsals over the years.

The music of Endless Boogie embodies the band’s name perfectly as each of their songs reduces the history of American rock to a single riff, which is then repeated endlessly. It sounds something like Canned Heat adhering to the compositional strictures of Neu! with Träd, Gräs och Stenar hanging around on stage brushing the hair out of their eyes. Their music is so obvious that no one’s ever thought of it, possibly because it’s below thought, a distillation of the most visceral, mind-numbing, andjoy-inducing elements of a trip down a ’70s freeform radio dial. It’s an inherently stupid sound—’70s blues-rock—made even stupider through reduction, until it breaks through the other side and becomes the closest thing to a transcendent, antithought experience that contemporary music is able to offer. Live, the spiraling, repetitive grooves and nearly constant fuzzed-out soloing of front man Paul “Top Dollar” Majors (a world-renowned collector of psych records) is at first refreshingly straightforward, then boring, and, finally, after you switch off your brain like a robot powering down, pure white-light heaven. (source)




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Robert Rutman - Zuuhh!! Muttie Mum!! (1998)


Born in 1931 in Berlin, Rutman lived for a long time in the US where he studied art between 1956-1992 and where he later in the 1970s founded the Steel Cello Ensemble featuring various players over the years. The music was produced on steel instruments like the Bow Chime or the Steel Cello that were built by Rutman himself earlier on. Up until today there have been a dozen solo and group releases. The players on this CD were Bob Rutman, Rudi Mose (drummer of Die Haut and Einstürzend Neubauten), Matthias Bauer and Carsten Tiedemann.



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