Ghédalia Tazartès - Ante-mortem (2011)

 

Avangardni autodiktat stvara čudesne zvučne kolaže: konkretna muzika, world music, poezija, arhajski noise, terenske snimke, barokne petlje, egzotično ozračje, komorna onostranost, magična imaginacija...

ghedalia tazartes - Ante-Mortem

Fantastical outsider sonics from the brink of surreality, courtesy of avant-garde autodidact, Ghedalia Tazartes. 'Ante-Mortem' is one of his major works of the last 20 years. Twenty three LP tracks plus bonus 7" sides serve some of his freakiest, otherworldly expressions, from drone guitar scapes to terrifying noise and chamber synths, splintered percussions and near-baroque composition, and of course all connected by that utterly possessed set of pipes! It's that archetypal voice which defines all of his work, and here Tazartès is truly in astonishing form, whether wailing over cod-classical guitar, bawling to tempestuous strings or crooning alternately in French and English (I'd swear he says "F*ck you, Baby.. tonight" on 'Dix'?!). It's surely testament to his timeless, entirely unique aesthetic that these tracks could just as easily appeared on any given release from a catalogue spanning over thirty years. OK, some of the synth sounds and the mastering may betray this as a modern release - perhaps most comparable at times with his amazing Reines D'Angleterre project for Bo' Weavil - but ultimately he still sounds like nobody else, and probably never will. - Boomkat

hedalia tazartes - Tazartes' Transports'

Transports' is the incredible 2nd album by audodidact and outsider musician/composer Tazartès. Originally released on vinyl in 1980, it has now been reissued with extra material on CD in 1998 and 2009, and "Probably represents the most original example of the artist's poetical and personal approach to sound organisation." The tracks for 'Transports' were recorded in 1977 at Ghedalia's own studio in Paris, strafing stream-of-conscious between rippling electro rhythms to outernational singing styles, collaged field recordings and musique concrete, to chants, tape loops and exotic atmospheres with a perpetual sense of drift and magical imagination. We're spellbound from the first to last, through the deeply evocative peal of church bells and swirling synthetic textures in track 2, via humid sci-fi scenes and alien avian chatter on track 5 and the lost zones of the closing stages. Also included are the two parts of 'Transports' which were composed and recorded for a theatre piece later in 1997 and produced by Emanuele Carcano. These are denser, more spacious and dramatic, but not necessarily that great. The disc concludes with 'Elie', a charming piano piece performed in duo with the composer's young daughter. For the original 'Transports' at least, this is nigh on essential for fans of adventurous electronic music and composition.





ghedalia tazartes - Les Danseurs De La Pluie (EP)

Planam present the titular disc from outsider musician Ghedalia Tazartes' 4CD boxset, including four previously unavailable tracks pressed on a "creative disc". They're all relatively short pieces. 'Assassins' 1 & 2 were recorded around the 'Eclipse Totale' sessions in 1977 and consist of banking guitar feedback, unhinged hollers, and an unsettling piece of children's screams looped against droning synth tones and electronic pulses. The other two were recorded in 2005. 'Assassin 3' is a mystical piece of ecstatic ululations and plangent electric guitar riffs, kind of like a parched and feverish fusion of Dylan Carlson and Baris Manco, while part 4 feels more opulent, plush synth pads set against strange, strafing distortion, rhythmic exhortations and percussions with a surreal cinematic quality. Yet again, Ghedalia provides us with some of the most compelling, weirdly life-affirming music we've heard in ages. Recommended.



ghedalia tazartes - Works 1977-79

 The always-mind expanding Vinyl On Demand label collect a staggeringly unique body of early work by cult outsider musician, Ghédalia Tazartès, including 4 full albums plus a 10" of unreleased work made in 1978. Born in Paris in 1947 to Turkish parents, artist and autodidact Tazartès has spent over 30 years experimenting with myriad musical practices and creating a catalogue of cult recordings deeply informed by his "extra-European" and "intra-European" heritage. He's both in possession of, and possessed by, a shamanic vocal talent, with the ability to embody a multitude of characteristics. This, together with his unimpeded sense of compositional flux, swerving between musique concrete, technoid loops, piano pieces and pseudo-ethnic imagineering, makes for a thrilling experience unlike any other. This collection includes some of his most important works, among them his earliest release, 1979's 'Diasporas' - listed by Steven Stapleton in his legendary NWW list - besides the exotic collages of 'Tazartès', the enchanting and otherworldly loops and scapes of 'Transports', and the two jaw-dropping extended pieces of 'Une Éclipse Totale De Soleil', plus a further 10" of unheard, shorter cuts of hectic electronics, unhinged vocals and and bewildering composition. This passage begins to surmount his magic appeal "He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. utilising magnetic tape recorders, he paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies." At times it feels like you're watching unhinged French cartoon without translation in a Parisian asylum while a Techno soundsystem beats outside, at others you're sitting café side being serenaded in tongues, or just simply hypnotised by the consistent metamorphosis of sounds; an unending, breathlessly connected flow of ideas playfully eschewing any formal notions of what is wrong or proper, and purely informed by what feels right and most affecting. It's a hugely, hugely recommended purchase, probably the most important avant-garde reissue this year - and some of the most uncategorisable, extraordinary music you'll come across. Unmissable.





ghedalia tazartes - Granny Awards

My word, where to start with this total head-f*ck of a record? Well, first off, it's another mind-expanding, previously unpublished jaw-dropper dug out by alga marghen, presenting 'Granny Awards' from the archives of the acclaimed French sound artist, Ghédalia Tazartès. The label are really spoiling us with their releases of late, this in particular being one of our very favourites. Verging on out-and-out craziness, but reigned-in with a masterfully steady head, these six tracks were created some time in the early '80s "in his anhydridic Paris", largely based on materials pre-dating his debut LP 'Diasporas' before he re-appropriated them for this lost work of art. We're instantly mesmerized by the opening track 'Ferme ta gueule, zarathustra', Ghédalia freely connecting the garbled "voix d'enfant" of Raphaël Glucksmann with intoxicating, slow moving and sustained synth chords, before jump-cutting into bird calls, dissonant arabesque strings and eccentric vocalisations with a blinding sense of freedom. The second side opens to a comedic, exuberant vocal set to crackly 78 backing on 'Whatever' and turns blind corners into ethno-noise trance-outs on 'Singing', hyper-rhythmic experiments on 'Wild' and a jarring hardcore punk-out in 'My Rock Ghedalia'. The freedom of expression and taste for exotic, arabesque tonalities is a mighty revelation and we assure you we'll be digging much deeper into Ghédalia's catalogue at the nearest opportunity. Exceptional sounds, massively recommended!!!



ghedalia tazartes - Une Eclipse Totale De Soleil

This record marked the first installment of Alga Marghen's retrospective of Ghedalia Tazartes' recording career: Une Eclipse Totale De Soleil was first reissued in 1997 having been initially released in 1979. In this form the original's two-part make-up was bolstered by a twenty-four minute third part, a new piece composed specifically for the reissue. Sounding quite unlike the output of his more academic contemporaries, Tazartes' music compiles fragments of tapes, voices and various other sound recordings in a fashion that's very idiomatic and new sounding, even by contemporary standards. The original two parts are made up from sung passages of Middle Eastern musics, drum machine noises, distorted signals and the voices of small children. The newer third part takes some of the same sorts of cues but is more in-keeping with turntablism or sampling culture, dipping into recordings recycled from pop culture. Recommended.





ghedalia tazartes - Diasporas Tazartes

Immersive, transporting and deeply arresting music from the revered autodidact and audio oddity. If you've never encountered Ghedalia before, this is an excellent place to start, welcoming you to a whole other world of exotic, electro and acoustic sounds, composed between 1979 and 1987 according to a genuinely far reaching and individual agenda.** "More than 5 years after the CD edition of Eclipse totale de soleil and Transportes, Alga Marghen finally decided to also reissue the first and forth LP by Ghedalia Tazartes including both on one CD. Ghedalia Tazartes is a nomad. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. He paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies… The greatest trips were made in the deep end of the throat: the extra-European music open the ear to Ghedalia's intra-European exotism. Where was music before music halls? Where was the voice before it learned how to speak? Ghedalia is the orchestra and a pop group all in one person: the self is multitude and others. The author and his doubles work without a net, freely connecting the sounds, the rhythms, his voice, his voices. The permanent metamorphosis is a principle of composition, it escapes control, refuses classification. To hell with the technocrates of noise and the purists of synthetic culture. All art like all true mythology use a double clavier, playing nature and culture, feeling and the distance of the flesh, death. Off limits!"




ghedalia tazartes - Repas Froid

Our affection for Berlin's PAN label is no secret, and the love affair continues with this stunning, category-obliterating offering from Ghedalia Tazartes. Fans of outsider music will familiar with the elusive 64-year-old Frenchman's work - he's been a cult hero ever since Steve Stapleton included his Diasporas album in the legendary Nurse With Wound List. For us, this LP-length record is an even more satisfying example of his ethno-surrealist vision: stitched together from numerous taped fragments, it's a ribald, richly rewarding cornucopia of warped field recordings, ritualistic rhythm, fourth world ambience and bizarre vocal interventions - imagine a polyphonic trawl through the most f*cked up, psychedelic radio frequencies the planet has to offer. Really, no words do justice the mystery, majesty and all-out madness of this incredible record - the adventurous-eared anyone among you, and particularly anyone who enjoyed the ethnographic forgeries of Felix Kubin's recent Historische Aufnahmen, need this in your life. As if to seal the deal, it's been cut at D&M, is limited to 500 copies and pressed on heavyweight vinyl with badass silk-screened artwork. These won't hang around for long and we urge you not to miss out.





ghedalia tazartes - Les Danseurs De La Pluie (Box Set)

"This lavish 4CD box set includes the complete Ghedalia Tazartes recordings previously issued on cd by Alga Marghen, plus a new mini-cd titled "les danseurs de la pluie". "Diasporas-Tazartes" is the cd edition of tazartes' first and fourth albums, "Transports" is the cd edition of Tazartes' second album complete with four bonus tracks. "Une Eclipse Totale De Soleil" is the CD edition of tazartes' third album with a long bonus track. "Les danseurs de la pluie" gives title to the complete anthology and is a 12 minutes mini-cd, presented on creative disc, including four previously unavailable tracks: two 1977 recordings from the Eclipse Totale sessions of a very wild and residential nature; and two colossal new pieces recorded in 2005."







jac berrocal, david fenech & ghedalia tazartes - Superdisque

 'Superdisque' is a cyptic musical conversation initiated by guitarist David Fenech between himself, the cult trumpeter Jac Berrocal, and the man of myriad voice, Ghédalia Tazartès. With uninhibited instincts they circumnavigate the borders of rock, jazz, punk and poetry, commenting on each defined style but never fully resolving their discussion, making for an open-ended and free-wheeling album. However, they do appear to reach a set of compromises, as each artist occupies their own space, not wishing to overstep the others and subsequently avoiding any ugly vies for dominance, although the many voices of Tazartès are the clearly the most active, catalytic variable, shiting from infantile gibbers to bewitching incantation with a possessed manner. Expect the unexpected. - Boomkat



"A French musician of Turkish parentage, French cult artist Ghédalia Tazartès is an uncompromising character who defies categorization. He recorded alone a dozen of albums, calling his way of working “Impromuz” for lack of a better term. His public appearances remain exceptional events.
Ghédalia Tazartès’ music has always been a mystery. It switches from musique concrète to – existing or invented – ethnic music, from poetry to noise, or from loops and collages to sad and extremely beautiful tunes in a second, but it constantly is in flux and coherent.
In 2004, Ghedalia finally decided to do live performances again. He first went with other musicians (Les Reines d’Angleterre, David Fenech & Jac Berrocal, Norscq & Black Sifichi, Nicolas Lelièvre) and is now a solo performing artist (although his very young son sometimes joins him on stage!).
Since 2009 Tazartes played in Riga, Bruxelles, Rotterdam, Venise, Dijon, Marseille, Lyon, Varsovie, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Le Thor, Madrid, Paris, Poitiers, London, Neuchatel, Hasselt, Berlin, Toulouse, Lausanne, Dunkerque, Glasgow, Den Hague, Dusseldorf…


GHEDALIA TAZARTES’ “HAXAN” SOUNDTRACK (cinemix)
Cultish performer meets with a unique film

Häxan is a documentary about the history of witchcraft, told in a variety of styles, from illustrated slideshow to dramatised events of alleged real-life events, right up to the early twentieth century (when the film was made, in 1922).
Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients.
Tazartes’ chamanic voice and talent for incantation make for a unique and frightening experience.

photo ©Martin Argyroglo pour le lieu unique (Nantes).
In 2008, Tazartes was invited to perform for the Patti Smith exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. In the same Cartier Foundation he created “Häxan” on April 21st 2011 for the “Vaudou” exhibition.


TV
Tazartes on TV in 25 April 2012 (first time since 1982), watch it again here. It features some amazing footage from 82 – when GT had hair!!)
http://desmotsdeminuit.france2.fr/?id-video=rhozet_dmdm_20120425_183_26042012122519_F2&vdo=1
DISCOGRAPHY :
* Quelque Part Quelqu’un, mini LP, recorded 1977, released 2011
* Diasporas, LP, recorded 1977,  Cobalt, 1979
* Tazartès Transports, LP, recorded 1979, autoproduction, 1980
* Une éclipse totale de soleil, LP, recorded 1979, Celluloïd, 1984
* Tazartès, recorded 1979, LP, AYAA, 1987
* Check Point Charlie, CD, AYAA, 1990
* Voyage à l’ombre, CD, Demosaurus, 1997
* 5 Rimbaud 1 Verlaine, mini-CD, Jardin au Fou, 2006
* Les danseurs de la pluie, mini CD, Alga Marghen, 2006
* Alma Marghen Anthology, 4cd box Alga Marghen 2006
* Jeanne, CD, Vand’Oeuvre, 2007
* Hystérie off Music, CD, Jardin au Fou, 2007
* Repas Froid, CD, Tanz Procesz, 2009
* Ante Mortem, CD, Hinterzimmer, 2010
* Works 1977-79, 4 LP-Box, Vinyl on Demand, 2011 – read more below
* Repas Froid, LP, PAN 17, 2011
* Granny Awards, LP, PAN Marghen, 2011
* with Reines d’Angleterre: Globe et Dynastie, Bo’ Weavil, 2012

PRESS :
See a selection of unpublished photographs detailing Ghédalia Tazartès’s unusual home and music studio, which the musician (who has lived there since 1967) sees as fundamental to his compositional work. “Without it, I don’t know if I’m a musician”, he told Nick Cain in the interview. See the photos in The Wire 

“Ghédalia Tazartès is a nomad. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. He paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker (…) Ghédalia is the orchestra and a pop group all in one person; the solitary opera explodes himself into an infinity of characters. The self is multitude and others. The author and his doubles work without a net, freely connecting the sounds, the rhythms, his voice, his voices. The permanent metamorphosis is a principle of composition, it escapes control, refuses classification. Off limits, music descends, cries and screams when it touches the ground.” (André Glucksmann)

“[…] every so often, someone introduces us to a piece of music that’s just so downright bizarre, so totally unlike anything we’ve ever heard, it really doesn’t need any kind of wacky backstory or WTF visual accompaniment. Such was the case with French musician-composer Ghédalia Tazartès and his 1979 masterpiece, Diasporas. […] Trust us: Don’t listen to it alone after dark or in an altered state of consciousness. Actually, listening to this will probably alter your consciousness all by itself. […] We could attempt to describe Tazartès’ music–French avant-garde gypsy trance minimalism?–but really, there’s not much point. You just have to hear it. This guy is attuned to some other frequencies, for real. weirdestbandintheworld.com

You need to have this as a part of your life, whether you are a indie rock nerd or a black metal nerd. http://iownsomerecords.tumblr.com

Unusually personal & intimate musique concrete have made Tazartes’ name a watchword for people with serious ears (and a cd reissues on Alga Marghen in the early 2000s certainly helped too). Fluid field recording loops of children talking & gabbering in French, with somber muted organ drone swaying slowly along behind them. Tazartes’ crackshot & cathartic vocal wailing is as beautiful as a blade of grass, & there’s plenty of it here along with metal riffs, koto boings, doom-laden classical strings, & other oddities. There’s even some recordings of Tazartes’ daughter & piano bits. Includes ‘Diasporas’, ‘Une Eclipse Totale de Soleil’, ‘Tazartes’, Transports’ and a 10 inch of unreleased material called ‘Quelque Part Quelqu’un’. http://weirdorecords.com

If you wanted to own a record of music that is absolutely different from almost anything you’ve known or heard, snap to it: Dais’ reissue of the NWW List-approved vocal melee by Parisian pyrrhic warbler Ghédalia Tazartès is instantly one of the most difficult records of my nearly 35 years aboard this dying mudball. Calls to prayer meets calls of strangulation, calls of possession, a spiritual intifada from the darkest corners of the cabarets to the recording studio to the vastness of the desert’s sprawl, all channeled through Tazartès’ extreme styles, going from soaring wails to multi-toned throat singing, sometimes in the same track. This is nightmare music that’ll make you feel unclean and weird, designed to break your concentration and focus on it and it alone. And if you can deal with it, you’re tougher than me. 500 numbered copies. (http://www.daisrecords.com)

“4LP-Box with 10″ Tazartes Transports, Tazartes, Diaspora, Une Eclipse Totale De Soleil, and Quelque Part Quelqu’un. The French artist and autodidact Ghedalia Tazartes who is born in Paris in 1947 is a true nomad spending more than 30 years within musical practice and experimentation. Ghedalia is the orchestra and a pop group all in one person: the self is multitude and others, freely connecting the sounds, the rhythms, his voice, his voices. The extra-European music opens the ear to Ghedalia’s intra-European exotism. The permanent metamorphosis is a principle of composition; it escapes control, refuses classification, diametrical to the purists of synthetic culture and technocrates of noise. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. Utilizing magnetic tape recorders, he paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. This box concentrates on his early works from 1977-1979 and his four officially released vinyl-LP’s plus a 10″ of an unreleased work from 1978. All the material is superbly remastered for vinyl by Anders Peterson of www.ghostsounds.net pushing the overall quality and dimension in sound to an amazing new level and experience.” SquidCo

http://julietippex.com/roster/ghedalia-tazartes/