utorak, 18. ožujka 2014.

Invisible Elephant - Sleepwalking (2014)



Kao kada se odjednom osjetiš strašno glupim jer čitav život nisi primijetio postojanje te magle koja lebdi ispred stvari i povezuje te s vodom u tvom srcu.

 invisible-elephant.bandcamp.com/releases

www.invisible-elephantmusic.com/



it's been a while since the the last album, longer than i was hoping for. i thought about recording this album but thinking was pretty much all I was getting up to until i got an email last year asking if i would be interested in submitting a song for a compilation.
that turned out to be the spark/motivation/kick up the arse (cheers euan!) i needed because after i recorded that one song i couldn't stop and the whole thing was done pretty quickly.
the first album (the lights go out) was an unexpected but interesting spooky creative trip, the second (anomie or swimming in a black sea) was the heartbreak album and this one is back the more spontaneous feel of the first. a 40 minute trip around what was happening in my brain around that time.
i did have a concept for the album once i'd inadvertently ended up starting it. i wanted to record something was an album length sleep cycle. around the time of the recording i was having a strange time sleeping. i'd eventually drift off (i think) but i wasn't sure if i'd gone to sleep or not. i'd hallucinate and see spiders dangling over the bed and ants crawling over me and then wake up, do my normal just-woken-up things and then wake up for real. if not spiders and ants it would be drowning, being dragged under the waves and unable to pull myself up. it wasn't actually sleepwalking as far as i can remember but it was a strange time and that all filtered through to make the record.
i wanted the record to start with clarity (i'm awake) then slowly drift off into a peaceful sleep before disturbance and nightmare visions in the middle and then wake up again refreshed at the end (two moons).
one area of continuity is the haruki murakami references. people have emailed and mentioned them before and there are two songs in particular which are probably obvious to anyone who is interested by the titles. the other consistent thing is the environmental recording of children playing the same recording has been used in all of the albums.
as may be apparent, i've decided to be a bit more open an communicative starting with this album (there are also notes on the individual tracks if you click on them). i don't want to share too much but i realise from things i like and also from some emails i've had that some people are interested in knowing more and that it can add something to the music if there's a bit of context so although it's against my nature i'l do my best from here on in.
one final thing i should address is the thanks on the cassette sleeve. i forgot angie without whom none of this would have happened. i know i haven't exactly changed the world but releasing these records has been important to me and without angie's initial encouragement and help i never would have done more than the lights go out and no more than about 5 people would have heard my music so a huge thank you and apology.
rob (invisible elephant) 

This is some serious slow-burn, green wood approach to making music. So much smoke, so much hazy, otherworldly, aromatic, attempts to build something that would burn up everything. But what we get is a smoldering center, a faint orange glow that refuses to give up long after we did. That's what holds this shimmering, melancholy track by UK shoegaze/drone artist Invisible Elephant together. "From the Bottom of the Well" contains enough emotional heft to knock a house off its foundations, but instead blows in like a feather, and with our wood green and unmet gives it just enough to survive. We are really, really pleased to be able to debut this video from Invisible Elephant's newest LP Sleepwalking out on Two Hands Records. 4AD/Eluvium inspired shoegaze bliss. Enjoy.
- www.tometotheweathermachine.com/



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ponedjeljak, 17. ožujka 2014.

Dead Neanderthals - .​.​. and it ended badly (2013)



Nizozemski bučni heavy jazz. Karika koja nedostaje između Coltranea i stavljanja glave u mješalicu betona.

deadneanderthals.bandcamp.com/album/and-it-ended-badly

 



deadneanderthals.wordpress.com/
Two contrasting approaches to ecstatic noise were on display in a stunning double-bill at The Vortex; the venue name entirely appropriate for the relentless churning fury of the two groups. Alex Ward (guitar) and Jem Doulton (drums) of Dead Days Beyond Help were tonight reinforced by Alan Wilkinson (saxophones). Their set was full of racing grinding riffs, the drums winding lithely around the falling sparks created by the butting metallic heads of Ward and Wilkinson, who loudly roared and whooped in the stormier passages. A marauding free-rock monster, Dead Days Beyond Help offer the sort of all-encompassing open-minded avant-blasting that is often required to keep yourself sane.
Dead Neanderthals summoned their amazing music through sheer force of will. Two baritone saxophonists (Colin Webster and Otto Kokke) and a drummer (Rene Aquarius) unleashed music of such molten fury that it should have gripped the attention of even the most leather-eared and jaded volume-junky. Those who have heard their excellent album for Raw Tonk, ‘…And It Ended Badly’, will be familiar with the band’s capacity for screaming intensity; this, however, still left me vulnerable to what was a performance of such passion and fire that I became concerned at points that we might not all make it out the other side. After being illuminated by three harsh glaring spot lights, Webster and Kokke immediately set about constructing a tower of honking the likes of which I have rarely witnessed, the drums a rattling machine gun accompaniment. They unrelentingly delivered a torrent of sound that suggested the missing link between John Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’ and the experience of pulping your head in a blender. Passing through several boundaries: flinching discomfort at the volume and aggression, building to excitement as the noise took full-hold, and then over the event horizon into a sort of bludgeoned zen-calm as it finally ate what was left of my mind and my last coherent thought disappeared into its gaping razored maw.
A willing, if shell-shocked, supplicant to a blaring sacrifice, I wobbled out into the night with smoking ears and a head full of static and slowly cooling rubble; a bus transporting me home in a daze.
Find out more about Dead Neanderthals here, and vist their Bandcamp page here.  Listen to Dead Days Beyond Help here.
- Michael Holland 



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utorak, 11. ožujka 2014.

Tilman Robinson - Network of Lines (2013)


Ako jedne zimske noći neki australski jazz-pop-klasični muzičar...
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listenhearcollective.bandcamp.com/album/network-of-lines

www.tilmanrobinson.com/

Inspired by the iconic 1979 work “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller” by Italo Calvino, the debut album from Tilman Robinson has been described as a ‘most moving and extraordinary experience’. Composed in 2012 for the APRA Melbourne Jazz Fringe commission, the work sonically responds to the themes and spirit of this postmodern classic, giving musical life to Calvino’s masterpiece. Avoiding the literal and tokenistic, Robinson subtly transforms Calvino’s work, creating something truly unique.
Calvino’s words pass through Robinson’s musical prism creating an aural narrative that, while in debt to its muse, carves out its own identity.
Recorded with a cast of some of Australia’s most outstanding musicians the album will digitally release on December 31, 2013, with it’s official launch at the Melbourne Recital Centre on February 11, 2014.


Ever since the beginning, a constant tension develops the sound of Network of Lines, staying true to its name as it gradually points towards an uneven, relational growth of musical ideas that play off on each other without ever fully drawing apart. The tension is generated by a sort of underlying playful violence that the sounds enact on each other, never really gelling together, never at ease into the forward-thinking of a melody or the sheer enjoyment of the present that its jazzy elements might connote; no, these sounds are at war, which is to say they shift genres as a gesture of conflict, opening up a whole environment of connections out of which a unity could only be conceived of from afar, from outside. Sure enough, we can call this an album in the traditional sense, but once the music starts it seems to be something else, something that doesn’t quite relax into a fully-fledged form, something that is always already both falling apart and keeping together, an illusory yet true communication that conveys no more and no less than the sum of its parts.
This work by Australian composer Tilman Robinson is based upon a novel by Italo Calvino called If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, a book that unfortunately I have not read, which will leave this review lacking in that department. However, guided by other Calvino texts, it might be safe to take the idea that Network of Lines is (possibly) more about the experience of listening than anything straightforwardly musical and run with it. If so, it provides an ample setting under which to hear the entire thing as an exercise in ‘how music is made’ by means of pitching ideas and sounds into a constellation of conflict, one in which a strings-driven post-rock section seemingly out of a Bell Orchestre record fundamentally wants something different than what an atonal short horn part wants to achieve, both emotionally and intellectually, and yet they both evolve from mutual interaction. Robinson’s mastery consists here of making this sound like a coherent progression, skilfully avoiding the dangers of musical mash-ups that often plague those who attempt such an approach. The key, it would appear, is this conflict, articulating all those elements at odds through what they fail to be, creating a set of relations in which a Balkan dance becomes an entryway into melancholy, in which an ambient section stops dreaming and grows ever more focused, in which minimalism is but a mask for an underlying mess of noisy improv.
Going further into this idea, the album cover seems to depict a unified whole, a totality in harmony. Nevertheless, if looked at from a close distance, the complexity of the network is revealed in all its disparate glory, with differing, often asymmetrical lines connecting dots of varying sizes and degrees of closeness. It’s an incredibly chaotic image, and yet, it works to give the viewer the certainty of the whole, a whole that is not at all similar or compatible with the conventional understanding of a totality as totalitarian. This is Network of Lines‘ anarchic flow, a mass of sounds that play at war, that never fully let go, never fully disappear under a ‘general direction’ and are therefore constantly drawn into a game of strange, non-organic musical growths that encompass everything between post-rock and modern composition.
Played by a small strings orchestra, there’s a very strong sense here that the musicians are having fun with the material, perhaps confirming the point that this is music about playing music, about listening (all those memories that these pieces evoke, all those feelings, all those thoughts that are reflected by the essential disharmony of neuronal functions), about the way sounds gleefully pretend to hit each other, in the process making something that is joyfully creative, a network that, in its immense variety and vibrancy, feels utterly and magnificently full of life.- David Murrieta

The 1979 novel If on a winter’s night a traveller  by post-modern writer Italo Calvino has been described as a ‘playful, post-modern puzzle’. It is a many-storeyed funhouse of thematic mirror-mazes, prismatic lenses, dead-ends, genre-mashups and multi-person narrative.
In short, it is surprising that it has taken this long for it to be used as inspiration for a musical suite.
Melbourne based composer, trombonist and arranger Tilman Robinson – his bio suggests ‘sound artist’ which is, yes, closer to the truth – has taken the Calvino novel and presents it through his own prismatic lens, creating the suite ‘Network of Lines’.
Given that the original is kaleidoscopic, Tilman’s confident repurposing of Calvino’s narrative material could have been a dog’s breakfast (a slightly tripped-out, pretentious dog at that).
It says much for the composer’s taste, style and wit that it isn’t. In fact Network of Lines is a work of ethereal and pure loveliness – albeit one with a red-blooded heart. No wonder ABC Jazz’s Jessica Nicholas listed its 2012 live premier as one of her top five musical highlights of that year.
Originally composed for the 2012 APRA Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival, ‘Network of Lines’ has now been released through Perth’s ever-(pleasantly)-surprising Listen/Hear Collective. It is Tilman’s debut recording and is perfromed here by a nine-piece electro-acoustic ensemble.
Opener ‘Winter’s Night’ sets up an accent of cool drama with an almost ‘Maiden Voyage’ ensemble passage rising out of a low, low laptop drone, and scratched at by ambient noises as it develops.
What is also set up is a chill European atmosphere that pervades the entire work. Whether the becalmed, funereal ‘In Search of An Anchor’ (with a lovely translucent piano solo from Berish Bilander), or the drunken 7/8 Balkan wedding reel of ‘Malbork, Cimmeria’ (named for the novel’s fictional setting), this music breathes the woody smoke of the Old World. And the smoke is pungent and heady. Breathe deep.
Robinson’s sharp writing – and the simpatico skill of this bright, young ensemble in speaking it – is most evident on the quite amazing ‘The Void and The Iron Bridge / Shadows Gather’. The opening trombone theme (whispered to us, it seems, from Bartok’s Hungarian lakes) is taken up by the ensemble but staggered and slightly wonky. Soon the ensemble is marching around the lip of the void, fearlessly drunk, laughing into its maw. Drummer Hugh Harvey balances and holds this danse macabre beautifully, playing perfectly (imperfectly?) in and out of time with a bright empathy (and a slight grin).
Robinson’s writing throughout is exceptional – just as he avoided the obvious tone-poem trip in his reading of ‘If on a winter’s night a traveller’, he equally puts aside cliché or overt stylistic bindings in his compositions and sound-organisation. What we end up with is a truly beautiful balance of evocation and surprise, all spoken with a very human voice. You can’t help but feel each of these pieces deep within; sometimes with a small cut of pang, sometimes with the sweet kiss of caress.
His writing can be muscular too as on the twin piece ‘Lines: Enlacing’ and ‘Lines: Intersecting’. But it is the deeper, more mist-obscured pieces here that took me away to Cimmeria. The hymn-like quality of the suite’s closer ‘What Story Down There Awaits Its End?’ almost suggests a spirituality glowing through its milky haze.
Spirituality? In a work inspired by post-modern writing? Maybe not, nihilism is the religion there. But ‘If on a winter’s night a traveller’ is Calvino’s work, not Robinson’s – ‘Network of Lines’ is all Tilman Robinson’s work and it is quite something.-  John Hardaker


Tilman composes and produces in various settings. Recently he was commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne to compose a piece for their 5x5x5 Commission project. This project commissioned 5 composers to each develop a site specific piece for a different area of the Arts Centre. Tilman's piece Shrouded in Crowds was developed for the Terrace Garden above Hamer Hall, overlooking the Yarra, Federation Square and Flinders Street Station.
In late 2013 Tilman spent two months in residence at the Banff Centre in Canada composing, developing and recording a new series of solo works for trombone, piano, sound design and field recordings. The project, entitled Deer Hart, will be released in late 2014. Parts of the work were presented at the MONA FOMA festival where Tilman presented two one-hour solo shows for trombone, piano, no-input mixer and laptop as part of the Morning Meditation series.
"Robinson mesmerised an audience of all ages with music that was at once soothing and avant garde, but never anything other than warmly human" - Alex Needham - The Guardian

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nedjelja, 9. ožujka 2014.

Andrea Gabriele - Biography of You (2012)




Sintetičke korske evokacije.
Video + knjiga + muzika.


 



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Tomorrow We Sail - For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight (2014)

Picture

Folk, slowcore, neoklasika, minimalizam, ambient, post-rock.
Svaki osjećaj ima crkvu.

www.tomorrowwesail.co.uk/






Tomorrow We Sail is a group of seven musicians based in Leeds, UK. Formed in 2009, they have spent the past four years developing their sound into what is now an impressive landscape of billowing, reverb-soaked guitars, orchestral strings, piano, organ and multi-layered group-harmony vocals. Folk, slowcore, neo-classicism, minimalism, ambient and post-rock are all apparent in the music Tomorrow We Sail create together. If you’ve ever been moved by albums like Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’, Sigur Ros’ ‘( )’ or Low’s ‘Secret Name’, you may find yourself falling for this music.
After self-releasing their debut EP, 'The Common Fire', in 2010 the band retreated back to their studio to further develop and refine their sound as they sought to incorporate an ever-expanding roster of instruments. With the line-up solidified, the band released two singles, 'The White Rose' in November 2011, followed by 'For Rosa' in May 2012 ahead of appearances at festivals such as Kendal Calling and Tramlines. October 2012 saw Tomorrow We Sail embark on their first tour of the UK & EU, playing headline shows and supports with bands such as Caspian, Ef and Last Harbour, culminating in an appearance at the The London International Festival of Exploratory Music at Kings Place. That Autumn the band were part of the soundtrack to the independent feature film 'Broken Roads', released in cinemas across the US and winner of Best Motion Picture at the American International Film Awards.
Now the groundwork is laid for the band’s debut full-length. ‘For Those Who Caught The Sun In Flight’ is a supremely well-realised work. The seven stately, graceful songs move in orchestrated ebbs and flows of sound, gently building an immersive group identity. The voices are sincere and affecting, and often come in pairs or groups. The words themselves are full of emotive storytelling. The central trilogy of ‘Never Goodbye’, ‘December’ and ‘Testament’ is based loosely on Vera Brittain’s writing about the lost generation after WW1, and especially her autobiography ‘Testament Of Youth’, now considered a feminist classic about women’s role in the society of the time. There’s a powerful sense of the layers of history being carefully unravelled. And, unusually for a set of long songs, not a moment is wasted. The melodies are strong, the performances assured, nothing is hurried. Tomorrow We Sail ask for your patience. - www.gizehrecords.com/
Gizeh Records seems to go from strength to strength, as shown by its inaugural 2014 release, For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight, by the Leeds, UK-based septet Tomorrow We Sail. The band specializes in a style of music that while generally defying easy classification, draws upon multiple genres, among them prog-rock, post-rock, folk, and neo-classical; anyone with a jones for Sigur Rós at its most elegiac will certainly find much to like about Tomorrow We Sail. The group, which formed in 2009, features vocalist-guitarists Tim Hay and Ella May Blake, string players David Ramsay and Angela Chan, guitarist Matt Clarke, bassist Tom Ilett, and drummer Alistair Hay. Many of the members contribute keyboards to the album and sing on it as well, and accordion and Shruti Box also find their way onto the fifty-five-minute recording. Leading up to its debut full-length, the group issued an EP (2010's The Common Fire), two singles (The White Rose in 2011 and For Rosa in 2012), and contributed to the soundtrack for the independent film Broken Roads.
For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight begins boldly with the stately dirge “The Well & the Tide,” the music's slow burn of strings, guitars, and tom-toms dramatically complemented by Tim Hay's expressive vocal. Coming to the album for the first time, one would be excused for thinking of Tomorrow We Sail as an outfit with prog-rock leanings and fronted by a singer not afraid to expose his passionate side. Reinforcing that impression is the band's appetite for long-form compositions, with two of the seven pushing past the ten-minute mark. However, as the album progresses, it becomes clear that labeling the band a prog outfit would be tantamount to unwarranted pigeonholing.
The epic “Eventide” sees the group deftly alternating between melancholy slow episodes and climactic buildups and achieving an emotional impact in its music that more than justifies the Sigur Rós reference (the instrumental section at the center of “December” also invites the comparison). One shouldn't make too much of the detail, however: it would be more accurate to say that Tomorrow We Sail is kin to Sigur Rós in terms of the uplifting spirit conveyed by its music; sonically speaking, the two outfits are dramatically different, especially in the vocal department. Regardless, an ambitious setting such as “Eventide” illustrates that Tomorrow We Sail (like Sigur Rós) is a band whose playing is distinguished by a fine-tuned degree of delicacy and that knows how to reap maximum impact from both subdued and aggressive passages.
As strong as the opening pieces are, they're bettered by the subsequent trilogy of songs, based on Vera Brittain's autobiography Testament of Youth and her writings about the so-called post-WW1 'lost generation.' Though presented as separate pieces (and indexed as such), “Never Goodbye,” “December,” and “Testament” appear without pauses between them and thus could be seen as constituting a seventeen-minute epic. During the trilogy, the singing of Ella May Blake assumes a more prominent role, and consequently “Never Goodbye” achieves a stately grandeur that is frankly soul-stirring. As powerful as that song is, arguably the peak is “Testament,” a heart-stopping piece featuring a hushed female vocal performance by Blake whose exquisite beauty is matched by the song's soaring spirit; adding significantly to the material's plaintive character is the backing the band members and especially the string players bring to the performance. (Interestingly, there are moments on the album when the male and female voices intertwine in a way that calls to mind the vocal interplay of The Swell Season's Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová.)
One would perhaps expect that everything following such a piece would be anti-climactic and secondary. And while that's true to some degree—how could it be otherwise when “Testament” is so stunning—the closer “For Rosa” (which ultimately rises to an anthemic pitch that would do Godspeed You! Black Emperor proud) does manage to provide a goodly share of emotionally charged moments during its thirteen-minute run. All things considered, there's nothing hyperbolic about characterizing For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight as a triumphant and superbly well-realized work.  - textura.org







House Music Vol. I LIVE/ACOUSTIC [2012] 
For Rosa SINGLE [2012] 
The White Rose SINGLE [2011] LISTEN | BUY

For Rosa

For Rosa (2012)

The Gizeh family is a wide one, but Angela Chan seems to be at every gathering.  She contributed vocals to FareWell Poetry’s album and is half of A-Sun Amissa along with Richard Knox.  She’s also the violist for the 7-part band Tomorrow We Sail, whose newest single is making a play for the recently vacated spot once held by stage mates Her Name Is Calla.  On the new single (a follow-up to last year’s The White Rose and a predecessor to an album), we hear plaintive vocals, breakdowns and builds, and most importantly, strings.  We are not particularly keen on the vocals, as they seem unnecessary here, but the power is in the instrumentation.  When the 13-minute track kicks into high gear, it’s nigh-unstoppable, a pleasant surprise after its languid but pleasing 2-track predecessor.
Two key paths for a genre to avoid extinction are mutation and integration.  The former involves pushing a genre into territories unknown; the latter involves the inclusion of more mainstream elements.  Tomorrow We Sail seems to be taking the latter path.  As much as we hate to say this, vocals may be the best chance of keeping post-rock alive.  But the thrill of the track lies in the string sequence that dominates the final five minutes.  As the approach changes from long notes to short, the music erupts: first with 3:00 left, again with 1:27, and most importantly again at 0:27, when it’s just strings.  All post-rock fans love crescendoes, and Tomorrow We Sail is oh-so-happy to oblige.  This is the song that makes us look forward to the album; For Rosa is a success. - Richard Allen

tomorrowwesail.bandcamp.com/album/the-white-rose

 tomorrowwesail.bandcamp.com/

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petak, 7. ožujka 2014.

Gregory Spears - Requiem (2011)




Rekvijem u kojem je smrt ugodan pastoralni prizor nacrtan madrigalima.


gregoryspears.bandcamp.com/album/requiem


Gregory Spears is a composer of refined and “astonishingly beautiful” (New York Times) instrumental and vocal works. His recording debut is marked by Requiem, an otherworldly album-length composition scored for six voices, baroque viola, harp, troubadour harp, recorders, and electric organ, containing vastly eclectic influences. While the piece’s title and instrumentation suggest a characteristically baroque structure, these indices are juxtaposed with Feldmanesque harmony, Reichian repetition, and motet-like vocal stylings, liberating the piece from a particular musical era. The music is wedded to an array of time- and place-exclusive languages, including Latin, Middle French, and Breton, allowing for further multi-referentiality and conceptual intricacy.
The piece premiered in in June 2010 as an opera an opera/dance collaboration with choreographer for Christopher Williams for his dance production Hen’s Teeth. The performance enhanced the collage-esque sonic references with the disparate imagery of 19th century Breton fairy tales, Greek mythology, and middle age relics. The interdisciplinary realization was called “splendid…” and “the jangling together of singing voices, violin, harp, recorder, chimes, and electric organ is magical, like feathers stroking the back of your neck” (Village Voice). The New York Times called Spears’ score “the most distinguished component of the evening,” the instrumentation evoking a “shimmering medieval aura,” and New Yorker critic Alex Ross described it as “cooly entrancing.” - newamrecords.com/

A new requiem, here, from an unlikely composer and even less likely circumstances. Known locally for his opera Paul's Case, Gregory Spears wrote this full-length work based on middle-French Breton writing for the Christopher Williams dance piece Hen's Teeth, which contemplates the idea of the swan's song - the beautiful noise that these creatures are supposed to make just before they die.
Using singers from Anonymous 4 and a spare instrumentation that most prominently features troubadour harp, viola, and not a lot else, Spears intersperses the swan myth with the requiem text, much of it reflecting lyrical Baltic influences of Arvo Pärt, but with a young composer's restlessness. The swan's song is speculatively re-created with otherworldly vocal ornaments. The piece also contains counterpoint that echoes 16th-century madrigals as well as a modern sense of theatrical timing that keeps your ears on edge until the last note. The most individualistic part: The piece seems not to contain any judgments or emotional reactions to death. It's not tragic or liberating. It just is.- David Patrick Stearns

Traditionally speaking (though when are we ever all that traditional on Q2 Music?), Requiems are massive works, propelling a soul into the afterlife and at times as overpowering as cathedral incense. Look at Verdi’s Dies Irae, Mozart’s Confutatis or Brahms’s Seling sind die Toten. 
But Gregory Spears’s Requiem, the composer’s first album now out on New Amsterdam Records, starts off so subtly, so preciously, you think at first you’ve left the volume on mute. Combining the madrigal tradition of Victoria and antiphonies of Tallis and Sheppard with the limning sonic textures of John Luther Adams and Gavin Bryars, Spears’s Requiem tackles the more probing and complex intimacies of death.
Latin masses make a guest appearance in the form of a haunting Agnus Dei and a triptych of Kyrie, Libera me and Lux aeterna that weaves echoes and overtones to create a singing tone similar to the clanging of bells. However, Spears also works with 19th-century Breton texts and the poetry of 16th-century bard Jean-Antoine de Baïf, full of natural references that give the composer a great excuse to work in bird-like vocal lines. It’s not about the liturgical rite, but of the celebration (dour though it may sound) of life.
Subtle yes, but the overall effect is just as overwhelming with lush visuals straight out of the Dutch and Flemish masters. It beams with Vermeer-ian white and gold lights, teeming with Breughel’s minutest details and occasionally diving into Rembrandt’s layered blacks. Perhaps it's not the jolliest music you’ll hear this season, but it’s some of the most engrossing. - www.wqxr.org/

New Amsterdam is one record label devoted to promoting the independent side of art music. On November 15th, the label released two new recordings from two different composers. The first is the flute and percussion duo Due East’s sophomore outing Drawn Only Once, a multimedia performance composed by John Supko. The release is a CD/DVD set that comprise an audio recording of the performance and a DVD with the accompanying videos. The other is composer Gregory Spears’s Requiem, which presents a fresh take on a classic art music form. Why both CDs were released on the same day, I’m not sure. Both are notably different pieces of music. Due East’s performance tends toward the abstract, whereas Spears’s Requiem is a restrained, minimalistic chamber piece. Still, despite their differences, both releases are demonstrative of great quality and innovation coming from the New Amsterdam label, as well as excellent proof that classical music isn’t just for your grandparents.
Over the various periods of art music, the requiem has taken many forms, sometimes within the same period. The Romantic period is especially emblematic of this. The most well-known requiem not just of the Romantic period but of all art music, Giuseppe Verdi’s, is notable for its bombastic and theatric Dies Irae. Conversely, Hector Berlioz’s requiem is majestic and at times subdued, particularly in the gorgeous Agnus Dei movement. The Requiem as composed by Gregory Spears, however, is entirely different from both of those. A requiem derives from the Catholic mass for the dead, but Spears’s take is hardly mournful. Nor is it like Verdi envisioned, wherein the wrath of God is evoked through rapidly bowed strings and hurried choirs. Spears’s is, in the scheme of requiems past and present, practically quaint. He takes a piece that has its roots in participatory action (the Mass) and crafts an intimate, chamber recording that draws the listener deep into the mood of the piece. The staccato picks of the harp create a mood that’s more reflective than one might expect from a piece meant to evoke death. The piece, like many requiems, is beautiful, but not in the way that past requiems have been. In its restraint it packs just as much emotion as many of the requiems by the great composers of yore, and it does so in a manner that pays respect to those composers while presenting a unique contemporary vision.
The music is not the only thing that represents a departure from typical requiems; the text of the piece is also unique. This Requiem combines the text of a typical Latin requiem with a Middle French piece about a dying swan. As the striking cover art evokes, the piece examines death in an imagery-rich, poetic fashion, wherein the typical religious pleas found in most requiems are embellished on by the imagery of avian life. The words are sometimes striking, and at other times intriguing. In the beginning of the second half of the requiem, the choir sings, “All this happened at the time/The hens used to piss on their perch” (that’s the translation from the French to the English). The words, like the music, cast death in an entirely different light.
Spears’s Requiem, while artistically challenging in its own right, is by far the most accessible of the two releases. Drawn Only Once is unlike most classical music around. Parts of the album sound akin more to contemporary ambient music than what most consider “classical” music, but the album’s roots in the latter genre are still quite plain. The recording consists of two pieces: the thirty-five minute “Littoral” and the fifteen minute “This Window Makes Me Feel”. Though both can be listened to individually, it’s best to listen to them while watching the accompanying videos. A lot of the thematic elements of the songs are drawn out further in the multimedia format, particularly the oceanographic and cartographic themes of “Littoral”.
Both pieces, while containing a mix of ambient and art music flourishes, are unique pieces in their own right. “Littoral,” while maintaining a steady 5/4 time signature throughout its runtime, is a piece that sounds as if it’s always changing, much like the ever-changing tide of the ocean the piece evokes. The instrumentation of the piece is sparse. Flute, percussion, and readings of poetic texts comprise the piece, along with some electronic sounds that counterpoint the primary instruments. Despite that sparseness, the piece is incredibly rich. In accompaniment with the video, the piece becomes an immersive dive into the concepts associated with cartography and the ocean. While immersive, the piece is a challenge to listen to, and at thirty-five minutes the piece feels overly long, despite its strengths.
The shorter piece, “This Window Makes Me Feel,” stands out more for its text than its music. The piece utilizes a reading of the eponymous poem by Robert Frittman, which involved hundreds of Google searches used to finish the sentence, “this window makes me feel.” The results are varied, sometimes humorous, but always insightful. “This window makes me feel like I’m protected.” “This window makes me feel like I’m a rabbit being hunted.” “This window makes me feel like I’m on the ship in Ben-Hur.” “This window makes me feel more Jewish.” The accompanying music is of a strong ambient bent, which brings out the power of the poem quite brilliantly.
For those looking for some fresh new takes on “classical” music, these two records are no doubt a great place to start. Better to begin with Requiem rather than Drawn Only Once; though both are good, the latter’s abstract nature as well as the time it takes to fully absorb the multiple facets of the pieces (the film, the music, and the text) make it a difficult piece to listen to casually. Both demand the listener’s attention, but Drawn Only Once is not just a piece of music but a multi-dimensional work of art, one that is not for everyone.- Brice Ezell
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četvrtak, 6. ožujka 2014.

Gordon Ashworth - S.T.L.A. (2014)



Čudna akuzmatička tuga i svila.




Due to manufacturing delays, S.T.L.A. will not be released until April 8, 2014
It's been a long, strange journey for Gordon Ashworth over the past few years. The Portland, Oregon resident has played in over 20 countries and released countless artifacts under his various solo guises: Concern, Oscillating Innards, CAEN, and others. He is also a member of the black/death metal band, Knelt Rote. After retiring Concern, however, a new aural picture has taken shape. S.T.L.A. showcases Ashworth at his absolute best, pressing dense compositions through a unique prism that straddles the line between melodic and abstract. Elemental influences of folk music as well as musique concrete and acousmatic works are audible within the sprawling confines of S.T.L.A.
Opener "Norma" sets the stage. Solemn banjo plucks resonate underneath clouds of minimal tonal shifts that evoke inner contemplation until bleeding into the slow, subtle grind of "Upbringing." This is music that creeps. As it crawls along, shards of light seep into the murky, haunting sonic expanse. Richness and texture are added throughout S.T.L.A. via Ashworth's field recordings made while working at night as a taxi driver and during a three month public transit tour in late 2010. Many of these strange, scratchy sounds are the result of getting lost in European cities in the winter and it adds another layer of desolation to the music. It's powerful.
The middle of S.T.L.A. is the anchor point of this record, though. "Suite For Broken Sex" revels in its catharsis, finding solace and hope in desperate piano chords that bend underneath layers of distorted drones. At high volumes it is all encompassing, like a black hole from which there is no escape. Like all good counterpoints do, "To Be The Man I Want To Be" strips the layers down to their barest point. Emotions run raw on rapid fire banjo excursions and discrete field recordings. Everything about the song is timeless, from the overt nods to American primitive to early Appalachian and African influences, finds the sweet spot between familiarity and the unexpected. Lost in distant memories it evokes feelings of trepidation and isolation while creating a sense of movement within a chaotic world. - orindal.limitedrun.com/
 
Gordon Ashworth shows with S.T.L.A. that leaving Concern behind was the right decision. While the restraint of his previous work is still apparent, there's a newfound sense of freedom to push boundaries and explore the darkest corners of tape loop and acousmatic music. Turn off the lights and get lost inside S.T.L.A. - Brad Rose

Starting pleasantly enough, a spaghetti western type score for dilated minds, “Upbringing” hits and it’s like your life is flashed before you in a relentless multicolour collage. Thick drones disconcert at the best of times, but Gordon Ashworth, who’s behind the now retired Concern alias, cranks the dial of discontent into the red. It soon effuses happiness, a white light that chews cracks in the premonition mortar. This would seem appropriate extension of Ashworth’s black metal place in band Knelt Rote, a transcendental introspection that exudes gluey gloops of adherent mood.
“Suite For Broken Sex” is immediately gratifying to these ears, a tremolo piano pattern eschewing mere Nils Frahm-isms of the “Said And Done” style. Mixed with a live Greg Haines spirit, the notes hit are joyous when played in overlapped chords. The piece after 5 minutes disintegrates into an Eluvium-esque distorted drone wash. This provides a neat enough counterpoint to the bounding rhythm of the earlier stages, taking things down into a top-and-tailed cutting up of field recordings and hauntological forewarning. Extra warning: don’t play this at too high volume or you’ll lose the necessary detail. The closing recordings blended in signify a textural dichotomy that refuses to settle. So far so good.
“To Be The Man I Want To Be” tops the lot after this. Plucked banjo, layered and delayed with field recordings actualize a keen rhythm that never lets up. The timbre isn’t so rough-hewn that it formulates finger-cuts; rather the additional twang resplendent in the harmonies morphs a rustic effect, one that refractively assuages the place between its ultramundanity. Getting to the other side of the tracks, Matt Christensen and Six Organs Of Admittance way, is closer “Desperate And Indebted”. It becomes the best piece of the album on multiple hearings, an initially fragmented, frenetic duality of impedance and order, determination and disdain. The subtle tidal ferocity that never resolves until silence reigns at the end of the record, provides the LP with a unitary and complementary shapeliness.
You find out who’s really there for you in times of a draught. And then the whole process starts again. This temperance for moodswings doesn’t perturb Ashworth of stretching out the dissonance into flurries of soft/hard sound, an acute distinguishing factor from his contemporaries, or similar artists like newcomer Porya Hatami. He really knows how to revel in his own noise, but luckily for us it’s excellent, sought noise. This could end up being one of my LPs of the year.- Mick Buckingham


 Traditionals
The debut release from the Ashworth Brothers' Orindal label. Advance Base (Owen Ashworth of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, with Jody Weinmann, Nick Ammerman & Edward Crouse) & Concern (Gordon Ashworth of Oscillating Innards & Knelt Rote) each cover a song from the Carter Family's first ever recording session. Advance Base fills a tiny bedroom with electric autoharp wash, levitating pianos & male/female harmonies, while Concern takes Appalachia to outerspace with churchly organ hum & disintegrating talk box melodies. Sad & weird.

Concern’s avatar

Concern

soundcloud.com/concern


 

 ga


Oscillating Innards, Nadir Emergence (2008)
 

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Doris Wishman - Indecent Desires (1968)

Srebrnim baršunom snimljena seksploatacija lutaka i žena nalik lutkama.

 

Though this is billed as being directed by Louis Silverman and written by Dawn Whitman, it was really Wishman operating and doing it all under a pair of her many aliases. Imagine if Rod Serling's Twilight Zone had gone sleazy, and you might have an idea what Indecent Desires is all about. A creepy loner named Zeb pulls a blonde-headed doll out a trash can, and he immediately is washed over by a sense of lusty longing that is just plain unnatural between a man and a hunk of plastic. He sets up a little shrine in his dingy apartment, and then has a vision on a street corner that lovely young Ann (Sharon Kent) is the living, breathing version of his trash can doll.
This leads to all sorts of scenes featuring Zeb fondling the doll, which are intercut with scenes of straight-laced Ann being overcome by invisible fingers of passion, but all this is before things get nasty and the doll fondling has been replaced by whippings and cigarette burning. To fill the genre requirements, Wishman tosses in perfectly tacky moments like a bout of nude yoga to spice up the action, as well as tiny nighties and frequent showering. In true Wishman style, things end badly for just about everyone involved, innocent or otherwise. - www.digitallyobsessed.com/



INDECENT DESIRES (1967)/MY BROTHER'S WIFE (1966)Director: Doris Wishman
Something Weird Video/Image Entertainment

The late great First Lady of exploitation, Doris Wishman, left behind a consistently surprising filmography which can be easily split into neat categories: the Florida nudie cuties, the New York roughies, the garish 70s nightmares (including the eye-popping Chesty Morgan films), A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER in a category all its own and the new millennium revival films. Of these different subgenres in her career, the black-and-white period shot exclusively in New York City is her most interesting and has aged the best. Something Weird visited this period of her life its very first double-feature DVD, BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL/ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN. Paired here are two more shot-on-a-shoestring roughie melodramas, but both much more coherent and admirable than those two schizophrenic wonders.
Blonde (wigged) and beautiful New York City model Sharon Kent (who was also a favorite of Barry Mahon) stars as Ann, a lovely secretary whose life is perfect. Her best friend Babs (middle-aged and buxom Jackie Richards) works with her in a friendly office and her boyfriend Bob recently proposed to her. Her world comes crashing down around her, however, when a creepy bespectacled geek (Wishman regular Michael Alaimo) begins stalking her. Through a supernatural mishap (which is never explained, but who cares?), the stalker finds a blonde doll and a tacky ring in the garbage can and suddenly, everything he does to the doll, Ann can feel being done to her! As the loser whips, feels up, undresses and puts a cigarette out on the doll, Ann feels every bit of it, and begins to believe her mind is unraveling. Babs is too busy whoring it up with a foreign sleazeball (Buck Starr, of TOO MUCH, TOO OFTEN) and Bob is away on business. Can she escape this hell?
INDECENT DESIRES is well-known to most cult film viewers, even if they don't realize it. Clips of creepy Michael Alaimo stripping the clothes off a doll and heroine Sharon Kent with her head cocked at an odd angle have appeared in Something Weird's trademark clip trailer, so it's great to see one of Doris' best get the digital treatment. Those familiar with the Wishman universe will be surprised to note that there are few pointless cutaway shots to inanimate objects, feet and the dubbed dialogue is matched with the actors' lips, making this one of her most technically accomplished films. Cinematographer C. Davis Smith was always in top form working on his many Wishman films, and his swooping hand-held camerawork is in full force here, including many breathtaking time capsule shots of New York City and effective close-ups of the characters, the mysterious doll and fabulous shadowy lighting. Sharon Kent, whose statuesque form graced many New York City-area skinflicks, gives a surprisingly good performance here, even though her hysterics can be a little ridiculous at times, and has never looked more beautiful. Thirty-something Jackie Richards was one of the oldest women in sexploitation, but that didn't stop her from flaunting her naturally large bust in countless nudie films of the mid-to-late-60s. Smith directed her film debut, ALL MY MEN, a year earlier, and may have been the person to recommend her to Wishman for this film, where she has a well-photographed love scene and performs nude exercises directly into the camera lens! A pretty non-descript title hides behind it a vastly entertaining and never boring roughie, with supernatural themes and a typical downbeat Wishman ending. Highly recommended!
Paired with the incredible INDECENT DESIRES is another underrated Wishman curio, MY BROTHER'S WIFE, that featured a memorable ad campaign which is often quoted more than the film. Oily bohunk Frankie blows into New York City after a lengthy absence to visit his older brother Bob. Much to his surprise, he finds his balding obese sibling has married a lovely young girl, Mary, who is trapped in a loveless marriage. Frankie offers Mary the love she craves (via beautifully photographed shadowy love scenes shot in silhouette), but also plays the field with his former girlfriend, party girl Zena. Little does Mary know her knight in shining armor is planning to embezzle all of his brother's dough through her and split with Zena! But with Doris Wishman doing writing and directing chores, this isn't gonna end pretty...
With MY BROTHER'S WIFE, Wishman-heads are back in safe territory with plenty of cutaways to paintings, chairs, and shoes and awkward dubbing. But more than a roughie, this film is Wishman's take on the 40s film noir genre, with a doomed love triangle, scheming criminals, hard-boiled dialogue and a number of far-fetched plot twists amidst the typical Wishman trappings. To keep the plot moving, a cast of familiar faces play each sad and pathetic character. To play the unhappy hausfrau, Wishman tapped June Roberts, a baby-faced nude model whose figure could cut glass and who bears a striking resemblance to Mike Vraney and Something Weird's #1 lady, Lisa Petrucci. Roberts would also grace the films of Barry Mahon, Michael Findlay, and Joseph Mawra, but her talents would be best tested by sexploitation maestro Joe Sarno in a leading role in MOONLIGHTING WIVES and supporting roles in FLESH AND LACE, THE NAKED FOG, RED ROSES OF PASSION and THE LOVE MERCHANT. Her adorable face is one of the best-loved by Something Weird followers. Darlene Bennett, who appeared in more 60s grindhouse films than any other actress, is given one of her biggest roles as the femme fatale Zena. Her acting left an awful lot to be desired, but she had a dark, mysterious beauty which many of her contemporaries didn't, and she fits perfectly in this sleazy film noir. Not to mention she had a bust to be proud of and a derriere that wouldn't quit, which is witnessed when she sits on the camera lens in a typically bold and brilliant move by cameraman C. Davis Smith. Also in the cast is Darlene's often forgotten twin sister, Dawn, who plays Zena's lesbian cousin Della, making the move on Zena in a signature uncomfortable Wishman sapphic love scene. Dawn was like a pudgier, less photogenic carbon copy of Darlene, which is why she wasn't as frequently cast in films as her sister. Making up the male cast members are two Doris Wishman favorites: Sam Stewart and Bob Oran. Stewart (whose self-portrait hangs on the wall in several of Doris' films) was a muscular square-jawed actor who had legitimate acting talent, and was usually cast as the heavy in films like BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN and MR. MARI'S GIRLS. His natural good looks also landed him hero roles in THE GIRL FROM S.I.N. (directed by C. Davis Smith) and CARGO OF LOVE. Bob Oran is best-remembered as the sleazy john who pummels prostitute Mary O'Hara in ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN.
Making the disc all the more attractive to Wishman fans is The Doris Wishman Trailer Show, made up of every existing trailer for Something Weird's Doris Wishman collection and which can all be accessed through a "Play All" feature! In addition to the superb previews for INDECENT DESIRES and MY BROTHER'S WIFE (both of which give away the films' endings!), each period of Wishman's career is represented. Color nudie cutie trailers for BLAZE STARR GOES NUDIST, GENTLEMEN PREFER NATURE GIRLS and NUDE ON THE MOON feature lots of nudist camp shenanigans, including volleyball, swimming, and lounging, and offer glimpses of Blaze Starr, Allison Downe, Shelby Livingston, and other nudie cutie favorites of the early 60s. Moving into the New York City roughie era, previews for BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN, THE SEX PERILS OF PAULETTE, A TASTE OF FLESH and TOO MUCH, TOO OFTEN prove why this was her most fertile period, filled with a cavalcade of favorite roughie cast members (including Gigi Darlene, Darlene Bennett, "Cleo Nova", aka Peggy Steffans, Barbi Kemp, Sam Stewart, Buck Starr, Bob Oran, Michael Alaimo, and Sharon Kent), fascinating C. Davis Smith cinematography, and hyperbole aplenty to draw the raincoat crowd in. Of the black-and-white films, the most intriguing and most deserving of the next Wishman double feature would be A TASTE OF FLESH (a hostage crisis drama) and SEX PERILS OF PAULETTE (Doris' first excursion into the slimy world of the roughie). Slid in-between Wishman's films was THE HOT MONTH OF AUGUST, a film she purchased while vacationing in Greece and re-dubbed with no rhyme or reason. Moving into the 1970s, marvel at the astounding freak-show appeal of DEADLY WEAPONS and DOUBLE AGENT 73, both starring the incomparable Chesty Morgan and their "sequel", THE IMMORAL THREE, another goofy spy caper with three female agents. The first penis transplant movie, THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT, features footage in the trailer that isn't in the finished product or on the Something Weird DVD of the film (which is cut as well). An Easter Egg on the main menu hides a trailer for one of Wishman's least-appreciated efforts, LOVE TOY, a sick tale of a man paying off his gambling debts by loaning his nubile teenage daughter out for an evening of depraved sex. This four-person sleazefest co-stars ravishing blonde starlet Uta Erickson in one of her many NYC films, and after appearing regularly in the grotesque horrors of Michael Findlay, her highlighted scene of putting out a cigarette out on a man's face probably seemed like a cakewalk. Another strong contender for a DVD release, if Image dares.
Contrary to the packaging, the announced Doris Wishman interview (which was to be supplied by filmmaker Ray Greene, who interviewed Doris for his exploitation docu SCHLOCK) is not included in the package, which is a shame as it would have offered a rare glimpse into the turning wheels behind one of the only women working in the man's world of exploitation. It is hoped that Something Weird will include the video interview (shot before her death in 2002) in a future double feature.
The supplements are rounded out by two color short subjects, both directed by Barry Mahon and starring Wishman's favorite girls, Darlene Bennett and Gigi Darlene! "The Room Mates" is narrated by an unseen photographer who introduces Darlene and her unfamiliar female roommate Mary Anne as "his favorite models". Darlene showers, lounges topless drinking topless, combs her hair topless and finally gets dressed. It's an uneventful little short, but Darlene looks ravishing in full color. "Music to Strip By" stars Darlene and incredibly cute Gigi Darlene as two girlfriends who bring over a new stripping record album (!) to their girlfriend's house. Their girlfriend, a professional stripper with tons of eye makeup, teaches them how to perform a superb strip routine to the record's beats. The print is worn, but the two girls look great and this is a rare opportunity to see them together in color! Finishing up the disc is a lengthy gallery of Doris Wishman posters and pressbooks chronologically spanning her entire career, including her lost films THE PRINCE AND THE NATURE GIRL, HIDEOUT IN THE SUN (her first film which Wishman once offered on her official website while she was alive, but has gone back into the vaults now) and BEHIND THE NUDIST CURTAIN, as well as alternate artwork for NUDE ON THE MOON (as MOON DOLLS) and BLAZE STARR GOES NUDIST (as BACK TO NATURE). Radio spots for classicks such as FUGITIVE GIRLS, THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR, SECRET NINJA, BLACK CLEOPATRA (aka THE NOTORIOUS CLEOPATRA) double-featured with TRADER HORNEE, THE BOOGEY MAN, THE BLACK CONNECTION and a blaxploitation marathon including MONKEY HUSTLE, FOXY BROWN, BLACK CAESAR and SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM play over these fascinating images, finishing off what is definitely one of Something Weird's best releases of 2004. (Casey Scott)
- www.dvddrive-in.com/
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Petr Skala - A Hidden Experimenter.1969 - 1984



E, pa da su se ovakvi "likovni", apstraktni filmovi snimali u Čehoslovačkoj 1960/'80-ih... Fiju.


 



The National Film Archive in Prague is publishing a DVD entitled Petr Skala –  A Hidden Experimenter. This DVD, which contains Skala’s experimental films from the years 1969 to 1984, is the first ever publishing project devoted to experimental film in the Czech Republic. It is also the first in a new National Film Archive DVD series that is to include DVDs on the theme of the Czech film avant garde of the 1920s and 30s, the beginnings of Czech documentary film and a documentary record of the trial of Dr. Milada Horáková.
The works of Petr Skala defy everything that had happened in Czechoslovak cinematography from the 1960s to the 1980s. In his experiments, Skala drifted far from the mainstream into the realm of painting-oriented, abstract film, where he looked for analogies between the moving image and music. Skala’s films combine the principles of informel painting and abstract expressionism applied to the media of film. His approach was based on the manual method, i.e. on the application of artistic techniques to a scroll of raw or already exposed film – engraving, scratching, painting or drawing on it, burning holes in it or using specific chemical procedures. For Skala, each and every frame is a unique work of art. In the course of 20 years, he created over 80 films and countless variations of them in which he tried to reveal the fundamental dimensions of human existence and discuss questions of birth and death as well as the mankind‘s relationship to the external world and its position in the cosmos. Skala‘s experimental work shows a clear development, which can be divided into several interconnected stages. He has found his basic means of expression already in his early black-and-white films, in which he first used the principles of informal art. After the non-objective, markedly colourful action painting of the first half of the 1970s he began to enrich his film compositions with figurative elements. Via this approach he reached in the late 1980s the present-day stage of video art expression, in which he combines, in a slightly narrative frame, the language of abstract art with computer-processed shots of reality. All stages of Skala‘s experimenting are characterised by the creation of an immense number of variations, modifications and combinations of several basic visual motives.
Petr Skala (born 1947) is a film director who has made almost a hundred and fifty documentaries and several hundred radio programmes. In 1975 he graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, majoring in documentary film, script writing and directing. Before 1985 he had in vain sought a fulltime position in film. Skala worked as a freelancer for many institutions including Kratký film Prague. Between 1981 and 1986, he had cooperated with the Czechoslovak radio. In 1967 Skala started producing his own experimental work, adopting video as a medium in 1982. It is symptomatic for the fate of Skala‘s experimental work that its beginnings coincide almost precisely with the onset of „normalisation“ tendencies in the political climate of Czechoslovakia, which brought about decline of the country‘s official cultural life and repression of free artistic expression. In the early 1970s, at a time when any experimental or alternative tendencies in film were mercilessly stifled, the solitary effort of Petr Skala was in fact a unique and exceptional manifestation of inward artistic freedom. The outcomes of Skala‘s work were born in complete solitude and without any hope or belif that they could ever be publicly presented. Petr Skala was a pioneer of hand-made film in the former Czechoslovakia and – together with  Radek Pilař – the first creator of Czech videoart.  He has also made an important contribution to research on the computer processing of the image. Since 1993, Skala has been the chairman of  the Video and Intermedia Association of the Union of Visual Artists and also a pedagogue at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. At the 1993 Deutscher Videokunst Preis in Karlsruhe, Skala was commended as one of the 50 most important videoart works in the world.
            The DVD is structured into six parts on the basis of chronology and thematic and formal affinity. This allows the viewer to follow the individual stages in the director’s career and his inner development. It also contains bonuses in the form of a video interview with the artist and a sample of his latest video-art work. The DVD comes with a booklet containing a monographic article, theoretical analyses of particular periods in the director’s career, a biography and a complete filmography of his experimental and documentary films. 
Original footage and arrangements used in making this exclusive DVD are from the collection of the National Film Archive in Prague. - www.nfa.cz/










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