Better known under his artist name of Marran Gosov, Bulgarian Tzvetan Marangosoff was born in 1933 in Sofia to a Bulgarian father and a German mother. He relocated to Munich in 1960 and made all his career in Germany as a film director, actor, playwright, singer and film music composer. In 2008, a retrospective of his 5 full-length films and numerous short films was held in Filmclub 813 in Cologne (from German Wiki). In 1977 and 1978, Gosov self released two LPs of his rather idiosyncratic own songs, under the unifying theme of Diletanttische Lieder, or Dilettantish Songs, or Dabbler Songs (see official website). Titled Baby Mann, the first LP was an autobiographical homage to his mother through a cycle of intense, one of a kind songs in unique arrangements. The Steine Kitzeln LP followed in 1978 and then Vocoding Life/Psycho-Akustik appeared in 1980 on Kuckuck, the legendary electronic and avantgarde label from Munich (Deuter, Hans Otte, Eberhard Schoener, etc).
Above: one of the short films Gosov produced in 1977 based on his songs.
Several of these films were uploaded to Vimeo in 2011 (look here).
♫ As opposed to his first acoustic LPs, Vocoding Life is dominated by synthesizer and Vocoder, as all vocals and guitars are channeled through the device. But while in Giorgio Moroder the Vocoder is used to create a pseudo-futuristic sheen over smooth girly vocals, in Vocoding Life the Vocoder creates a feeling of radical estrangement, or Verfremdungseffekt, ala Bertold Brecht, something even more exacerbated in the video above. These are mostly sentimental songs with weird arrangements on the verge of incredibly strange music. Due to the tone of the voice and the lyrics from previous LPs, I assume the German lyrics are either autobiographical or deal with very personal feelings and thoughts. It is even possible the entire project meditates on the state of Heimatlos and loneliness. Somewhere between spoken word and song, often semi-improvised over a basic written structure, these tracks form a coherent song cycle with extremely minimal arrangements sometimes reduced to voice and Vocoder only. Other tracks feature synth loops, rhythm from an electric organ or electric guitar, but voice and Vocoder remain prominent features.
Klar, unvollkommen bin ich. Wie kann ich anderen die Leviten singen. Auch ich bin ein von Zukunftserfahrungen gebranntes Kind, zurück-gefallen auf mich selbst und ahne schon die Gewißheit, daß am Ende nur jene Güte beweisen werden, die an nichts glauben.
[from liner notes]
01 Eifersucht (8:39)
02 Amore (3:15)
03 Lampenfieber (9:09)
04 Babymann (2:58)
05 Gitterbett (2:27)
06 Mütterlein (5:18)
07 Ferne Nähe (7:25)
08 Clown (5:02)
09 Kaltes Stück (5:11)
Total time 49:20
LP released by Kuckuck, Munich, West Germany, 1980
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