Salvador Dali ‘Je suis fou de Dali !’

In conjunction with Ubuweb

01 La Folie (:21)
02 Le Génie (:52)
03 Le Cinéma (:57)
04 La Conquête de l’Espace (2:41)
05 L’Hibernation (2:22)
06 Le Sport (5:52)
07 La Jeunesse (6:38)
08 Dieu (1:48)
09 La Méthode Paranoïaque Critique (2:07)
10 L’Amour (:55)
11 Don Juan (4:07)
12 Les Anges (2:28)
13 Le Pet (6:07)
14 La Mort (1:51)
15 La Liberté (2:46)

Total time 41:40
LP released by Sonopresse, France, 1975

A year after the release of his Cathar audiovisual opera-poem Etre Dieu, with music composed by Igor Wakhevitch, Salvador Dali (actually Dalí) released Je Suis Fou de Dali !, a collection of well-chosen excerpts from an interview in French with 3 journalists: François Deguelt, Jean-Pierre Mottier and Simon Wajntrob. If truth be told, half of it is pure wackiness, the other half self-promotion, and the difference is tenuous at times between surrealism and senility. But if we set aside the many scatological jokes, some excerpts are simply mindblowing, genuine audio equivalents of a Dali Surrealist painting. It is also close to some of Dali’s books, like his autobiography ‘La vie secrète de Salvador Dalí’ (1942) or collection of short texts ‘Oui’ (1971).

Usual Dali-esque topics recur here and there: sexual impotence of all great artists ; self-proclaimed Catholicism as a means to shock the avantgarde ; scatology, including a warm eulogy of fartiste Joseph Pujol, after which Dali mentions Benjamin Franklin as a dedicated farter (!) ; Dali’s own death and immortality is addressed during an exhilarating excerpt on Walt Disney’s (mythical) cryogenic freezing after his death in 1966, something Dali wishes for himself as well. Quotations abound from great writers and mystics like Cervantes, Montaigne, Stendhal or San Juan de la Cruz.

Track #6, Le Sport, focuses on Le Tour de France, the famous annual bicycle race. It is for Dali, as for Kraftwerk, an aesthetic epiphany: while he listens in awe to the radio reports from his studio, his mouth wide open and salivating, a little scab forms at the corner of his mouth, which he licks with delight, helping it grow thicker. When he is tired of licking, flies come landing around his mouth and onto the scab. Dali then slowly closes his lips to gently capture a fly between his lips. He’ll only release the insect after delighting in the fly’s efforts to escape.

Gulp!

Architect’s Office ‘Caswallon The Headhunter’

01 Prelude (11:31)
02 Prewar (7:59)
03 War (5:08)
04 Exhausted – chorus of Pregnant Women (8:03)
05 Parly/Party (4:37)
06 Epilogue (3:01)
07 Postlude (7:26)

Cast:
Denise Judson: voice, breathing
Lloyd DeMause: voice (interview)
Robert McFarland: voice
Paul Lundhal: ocean tape
Jane and Rarc Brakhage: brook recording
S.G. Hägglund: percussion
Stan Brakhage: conversation recording, 1949
Rick Corrigan: synth
Claude Martz: bass clarinet
Joel Haertling: tape, French horn, electronics

Total time 49:40
LP released by Silent Records, USA, 1986

CASWALLON’S COUSIN, BENDIGEID VRAN, THE GIANT WHO SOON WOULD LIE DYING FROM A POISON DART IN THE FOOT AFTER HAVING CONQUERED AND KILLED EVERYONE IN EIRE EXCEPT FIVE PREGNANT WOMEN IN A CAVE, WAS TO SAY TO HIS MEN: “TAKE MY HEAD AND CARRY IT WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU GO AND FOR EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS MY HEAD WILL BE UNCORRUPTED. AND ALL THAT TIME THE HEAD WILL BE AS PLEASANT A COMPANION AS WHEN IT WAS ON MY BODY. AND WHEN THE EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS ARE OVER, BURY IT AT THE WHITE MOUNT IN LONDON, FACING GAUL AND FOR AS LONG AS IT IS BURIED THERE, THERE WILL BE NO INVASION IN ALL OF THE ISLAND OF THE MIGHTY.” [from Jane Brakhage's booklet]

When King Arthur eventually dig up the head 400 years later, the Island of Britain was soon after ravaged by Viking and Saxon invasions. The story of Caswallon is inspired by 13th c. Welsh manuscripts where he is known as Caswallawn, a chieftain who led the defense against Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 54 BC. In her play, Jane Brakhage describes the battle episodes, the 5 pregnant women in a cave, and of course Flower, or Fflur in Welsh, the beautiful woman with whom both Caswallawn and Caesar were in love. For this historical setting narrated by various voices (principally by Denise Judson), Architect’s Office conceived an ambitious soundtrack of musique concrète sounds, synthesizer and real instruments. The music would stand in itself as great electroacoustic music, yet it never interferes or distract from the narration. The extraordinary Postlude is a beautiful group improvisation by Claude Martz on bass clarinet with electronics provided by Corrigan and Haertling.

Joel Haertling was trained as a classical musician (French horn) in Boulder, CO, during the mid-1970s. He began making experimental super 8 and 16 mm films while in high school. He founded the experimental music group Architect’s Office in 1983, the name possibly inspired by his own father’s trade as an architect, to which he later dedicated a website. Haertling published Zamizdat Trade Journal from 1984 to ‘94, a zine dedicated to underground music, self-releases of post-industrial and electronic music. He played the Faust part in Stan Brakhage’s Faust series of films, 1987-89, and contributed music to 5 more, including Kindering, Loud Visual Noises, I… dreaming, and Fireloop. The latter was Brakhage’s contribution to the multimedia show ‘Caswallon The Headhunter’, written by Jane Brakhage in 1986 for the collective of Boulder artists The Sunday Associates, of which both Haertling and the Brakhages were members. The project included dancers, singers, lighting, slide projections, costumes, films and music. Brakhage: “When I moved to Boulder, Joel introduced me to some very gifted young people and we formed a group, The Sunday Associates and started an Arts Series with shows every Sunday at the Boulder Art Theater. They were my chief collaborators on Faust [...] I greatly admired Joel’s collage abilities – he did an amazing track for my hand-painted film, Fireloop, in which I use fire as a metaphor for the light and sound process that accompanies moving visual thinking.” [Interview with Suranjan Ganguly, from: In Focus, Experimental Cinema, The Film reader, by W. W. Dixon and G. A. Foster, ed., Routledge, 2002].

Download

Barbara Golden ‘At The Corner of Alive and Jesus’

In conjunction with Ubuweb

At The Corner of Alive and Jesus (36:29)
Self released cassette, San Francisco, 1988

Written by Melody Summer Carnahan
Barbara Golden, Robert Ashley, David Cremin, Sheila Davies, Barney Jones, K. Atchley: vocals
Mary Oliver: violin and viola
Maggi Payne: flute
Larry Polansky: guitar
William Winant: percussion
Barbara Golden: keyboards
George Brooks: saxophone

‘At The Corner Of Alive And Jesus: A Cantata‘, as it was first called,  was premiered in San Francisco in 1987, with the following performers: William Winant (percussion), Sarah Willner (viola, vocals), Barbara Golden (narration, keyboards), Mary Oliver (violin), Laetitia de Compiegne & Sheila Davies (vocals), Miguel Frasconi (pan pipes), Larry Polansky (guitar) – information according to this source. Robert Ashley hadn’t joined yet, apparently. Barbara Golden (b. 1941 Montréal, Canada) graduated from Mills College in 1982, studying with Robert Ashley, Terry Riley, Maggi Payne and Lou Harrison. The wonderful gamelan music of the latter probably led her to join the Gamelan Sekar Jaya orchestra with which she still performs to this day. She also plays in bands WIGband, & Shroomy.com and host a radio show called ‘Crack o’ Dawn’ on KPFA, San Francisco (listen to past shows here).

Melody Summer Carnahan (b.1951) started as a mail artist in the late 1970s and later graduated from Mills as well, where she had started writing texts for avantgarde composers (see bio). Her best known disc is ‘The Time Is Now’, Frog Peak Music, 1996, where she invites composers and musicians to create music from her book of the same title, Burning Book Press, 1983, and including the participation of Joan LaBarbara and Robert Ashley. Her writings have extensively been set to music by US composers.

The narration tells the story of one ‘Barbara’, an eccentric woman whose original and funny behavior is told by Barbara Golden in a poetic and dreamy voice. The story is pure American Surrealism, with strange apparitions and unusual events. Musical interjections are used to dramatically or poetically enhance a scene or event, according to the situation (Mary Oliver’s joyous fiddle, Maggi Payne’s dreamy flute, George Brooks’s tender saxophone). Robert Ashley appears at 29:05 as The Voice in a dream Barbara experiences. The dream itself (including broken marble columns, pink clouds, orange flames, a Tiny Hooded Lady and a monkey) is hardly different from Barbara’s own everyday life. The whole passage is brilliant with its heavenly female choir and irresistible Ashley tone.

Download mp3
To the Ubu page

Cortex ‘Souvenir/souvenirs’

01 Cortex E (1:58)
02 Cortex F (1:13)
03 Cortex G (2:17)
04 Cortex H (2:06)
05 Cortex I (3:26)
06 Cortex J (1:34)
07 Cortex K (0:38)
08 Cortex L (4:37)
09 Cortex M (2:21)
10 Cortex N (1:35)
11 [unidentified] (1:03)
12 Cortex O (23:40)

Vocals:
Isabelle Y. (#E, G, I, J, N)
Mirella B. (#F, M, O)
Nadine B. (#H, K)
Tina S. (#L)

Total time 46:10
Recorded 1978 -1982
Cassette released by Insane Music, Trazegnies, Belgium, 1984

Cortex was Alain Neffe’s musical project before he started Bene Gesserit in 1982, his duo with partner Nadine Bal aka Benedict G. In 1981-82, the latter was then manager for Belgian New Wave band Digital Dance. Cortex was active between 1978 and 1982, their music focusing on electronic ambient tonalities and female poetry reading (in French), with tracks merely numbered by their respective letters – so presumably the entire Cortex output amounts to 26 tracks. Cortex A, B and C appeared on Insane Music For Insane People #01, 1981. Other tracks appeared on other compilations on Insane or elsewhere. ‘Souvenir/souvenirs’ is probably Cortex’s only full length release. The Belgian label Grafika Airlines published this tape as a joint release with Insane Music in 1984. My copy is the undated, Insane Music issue. Music-wise: The unsettling, metaphysical synth washes make one feel uneasy with their menacing tonalities, not unlike the 1972 Solaris soundtrack by Edward Artemiev. The readers are very young women just out of teenagehood. Their poetry deals with day-to-day concerns of late night cafés, neon lights, jukeboxes, the difficulty to find one’s place in society, lost love and lack thereof.

Download

Samuel Beckett ‘How It Is’ read by Patrick Magee

Samuel Beckett ‘How It Is’, page 114
read by Patrick Magee

Duration: 5:05
One-sided 7” single released by J&B Recordings (possibly 1972)

Patrick Magee (1922-1982) recorded several Beckett plays for the BBC in 1957, but this excerpt isn’t included in the 4-CD set of the complete series. I guess this was rather recorded at the time of the Krapp’s Last Tape BBC sessions, 1972, a play Beckett wrote specifically for him and his voice. This single was possibly a gift from Beckett’s publisher John Calder to his readers. During a public reading from ‘How It Is’, possibly during radio show, Magee transforms the chosen page into a study in panting, a race against his own breath.

Download

Leo Küpper ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’

1. Kouros et Korê, 1979 (23:40)
   Jeannette Inchauste: phonemes
   Jean-Claude Frison: phonemes
2. Innominé, 1974 (21:17)
   Allessandra Mihail: voice
   Foreign students from Brussels Free University: vocals

Total time 45:00
LP released by Igloo, Belgium, 1981

Belgian composer Leo Küpper (b.1935) started to experiment with electronic music in 1959 as a student at Liège University, Belgium, using two Brüel & Kjaer oscillators and a tape recorder. From 1961, while studying musicology in Brussels, he worked at Brussels Apelac electronic music studio, founded by Henri Pousseur in 1959. Küpper founded his own ‘Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives’ in Brussels in 1967. He created interactive sound installations he called ‘Public Computer Music’ (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma, 1977) and various electronic instruments like the ‘Automates Sonores’, the Kinephone in 1987, or the ‘Ordinateur Musical’, a voice-activated computer with electronic sounds interacting with the audience. These interactive musical events sometimes took place in Sound Domes (1977-1987), architectural structures with up to 100 speakers, like in Linz, Austria, 1984. Küpper was always fascinated with the human voice and some of his best works use it as source material. He researched the world of phonemes and glossolalia, or speaking in tongues in Christian and Orthodox liturgy. He founded the Phonemic and Vocal group in 1982, with singers using the musical machines described above. One of his compositions of 1974 is based on Antonin Artaud’s poem ‘L’enclume des Forces’. He often worked with actors and students, more rarely with professional singers (like mezzo-soprano A.M. Kieffer), in which case his music is comparable to Luciano Berio’s compositions for Cathy Berberian. In 1973, Küpper traveled to Iran to study santur with Hossein Malek. Since then, he has been a noted santur player, performing abroad during festivals and composing for santur and electronics.

‘Kouros et Korê’ (1979) is constructed from the extraordinary performances of dancer Jeannette Inchauste and actor Jean-Claude Frison, whose ability to produce a wide array of microscopic vocal sounds is used by Küpper to build a delicate, complex architecture of intertwined phonemes. The latter include such sub-categories as (in French): allophones, phonatomes, logatomes and phonetic micro-sounds. The close-up miking goes inside the sub-atomic structure of sound, while the studio montage organizes the phonetic sounds into a fascinating voicescape. No surprise sound poet Henri Chopin found the piece beautiful when Küpper played it to him in the 1980s (from a 2009 interview). Retrospectively, the works of Anna Homler, David Moss or Phil Minton seem to be inspired by these experiments.

‘Innominé’ (1974) uses the ‘Ordinateur Musical’ to process the utterances of a group of students. At the beginning, the program reacts with semi-aleatoric electronic sounds to the inchoate, indistinct ushed vocals. Then the seductive voice of Allessandra Mihail expresses the interrogations of an isolated individual. A fascinating electronic passage of dignified computer interjections follows at 6:00. Vocals return on 17:00, when all the students proposes new words and phonetic sounds according to their mother tongue (Chinese, Arab, Danish, French) during a collective performance using the interactive computer’s electronic treatment. In the end, the beauty of ‘Innominé’ impresses more than the technology used, which is indicative of its musical accomplishment.

Download

Discography:
1971 ‘L’Enclume Des Forces/Électro-Poème/Automatismes Sonores‘, LP, Deutsche Grammophon
1981 ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’, LP, Igloo 007
1985 ‘Amkéa/Aérosons’, LP, Igloo 032
199? ‘Litanea’, CD, Harmonia Mundi CM 2023
1996 ‘Electro-Acoustic’, CD, Pogus 21009-2
1999 ‘Ways of the Voice’, CD, Pogus 21018-2
2003 ‘Complete Electronic Works 1961-74′, CD, Sub Rosa

Appears on:
1991 ‘Cimbalom World Congress’, CD, Hungaroton HCD 18209

Doyen/Lasry ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’

01 François Villon ‘La Ballade Des Pendus’ (3:20)
02 Edgar Poe ‘Annabel-Lee’ (4:20)
03 Jean Cocteau ‘Batterie’ (2:25)
04 Frederico Garcia-Lorca ‘La Femme Infidèle’ (3:02)
05 Colette ‘Nonoche’ (4:30)
06 Guillaume Apollinaire ‘Gui Chante Pour Lou’ (1:30)
07 Walt Whitman ‘Chant De La Grand’ Route’ (2:20)
08 Pierre Emmanuel ‘Je Sais’ (2:12)
09 Luc Bérimont ‘Un Feu Vivant’ (2:50)
10 Charles Vildrac ‘Visite’ (4:49)
11 René Barjavel ‘Farendol’ (2:42)
12 Paul Eluard ‘Le Dit De La Force De L’amour’ (1:35)
13 Henri-François Rey ‘Le Rachdingue’ (3:31)

Jacques Doyen: voice
Jacques Lasry: Structures Sonores Baschet

Total time 39:40
LP released by Disques Alvarès, ref. C 475, France, ca 1972-75

Poetry reading by legendary raconteur Jacques Doyen, famous for his recordings with Jac Berrocal in the 1980s. Half of the tracks have musical accompaniment by Jacques Lasry, a Baschet brothers collaborator playing some of the Structures Sonores – the Crystal immediately recognizable on tracks #2, 4 and 5. The music reaches sublime heights on the latter, the haunting, hallucinatory ‘Nonoche’, yet Colette’s poem is almost comical, telling the story of an old, battered cat calling for the female ‘Nonoche’, no less old, to meet him in the woods, leaving her little kitty alone. The tone reminds of Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?’[+]. Elsewhere, particularly on the Gothic Edgar Poe poem, Lasry’s insidious, louche tonalities perfectly fit the Decadent, dubious tone of some of these turn of the century poems. 4 of them (Villon, Edgar Poe, Garcia Lorca and Cocteau) already appeared on Doyen+Lasry’s first disc, a 1957 released 7” single – fellow mp3 blogger Airform Archives posted some mp3s. The versions on this LP include new recordings with better sound quality. Another blog, Alice Rabbit, posted a 1966 LP worth checking out. Note: my copy of ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’ is almost free of clicks. The noticeable tape hiss comes from the recording technology, not from background LP noise.

Download

Jacques Doyen’s discography:
1957 w/Jacques Lasry, 7”, Ducretet-Thomson 460 V 316
1966 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poésie à mi-voix’, LP, Barclay 88006s
1968 Jacques Doyen ‘Récital de poésie’, LP, BAM La Fine Fleur #06
1972 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Claire’, LP, BAM
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Chansons et poemes’, LP, Alvares C 470
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Contes de la Cinquieme Saison’, LP, Alvares C 472
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poèmes Dits Par Jacques Doyen’, LP, Disques Alvarès C 475
1982 w/Jacques Lasry, LP, Structures Sonores,

Doyen appears on:
1983 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Paris Tokyo’ cassette, Tago Mago
1997 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Fatal Encounters’ CD, Megaphone Records
2004 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘L’union Libre’ (rec 1985) on ‘Prière’, 10” vinyl, Alga Marghen

Musicworks #38 ‘Bridging Language’

SIDE A
01 Helen Hall Winter Trees (excerpt) (2:05)
02 The A.U.U.C. Women’s Ensemble Oy U Polee Krenechenka (2:48)
03 Helen Hall Winter Trees (excerpt) (2:51)
04 Stella Trylinski The Cossacks Whistle (1:34)
05 The A.U.U.C. Women’s Ensemble Good Evening, Neighbour (1:36)
06 Penn(y) Kemp Simultaneous Translation (5:06)
07 Helen Hall Stoicheia (4:56)
08 Vedel Open To Me The Doors Of Repentance (1:01)
09 Serge Boldiress Conversation with Sibylle Preuschat (3:09)
10 St. Andrew Of Crete (4th century AD) The 3rd Ode Of The Canon Of Repentance (2:10)
11 Helen Hall Photoskia (2:06)

SIDE B
12 Paul Dutton Stereo Nose (6:06)
13 Susan McMaster Restlessness (1:31)
14 R.I.P. Hayman Yawn Quartet (with comments) (5:51)
15 Tekst (Richard Truhlar+Maria Zibens) Set 2: Readings From Julio Cortazar (2:05)
16 Steven R. Smith Factory (4:11)
17 bpNichol Eight States Of Denial For The 1980’s (2:53)
18 Steve McCaffery From Herodotus: The Histories (3:00)
19 R.I.P. Hayman Snore Sonata (3:29)

Total time 58:40
Cassette+journal released by Musicworks, Toronto, 1986

By including Russian Orthodox chanting, vocal- and pitch- based contemporary music and sound poetry, Musicworks #38 Bridging Language seeks vital forms of communal singing in contemporary practices. ‘Voices transform personal communication into community events’, writes editor Gayle Young (MW#38, p2) and in Russian Orthodox chanting, vocals are key to the communication between parishioners. But the Sound Ecology concept encompasses many aspects of environmental sounds: linguistics, ethno-musicology, liturgy, even over-looked human sounds like yawning and snoring. Musicworks #38 juxtaposes all of these in search of alternative tuning systems and a sacred dimension in sound art, since ‘voices express the musical, poetic and sacred aspect of our experience’ (Gayle Young, p2).

On side A, the music of Canadian composer Helen Hall is intertwined wtih Orthodox liturgy chanting in a surprising and chalenging dialogue. The cassette has excerpts from 3 of Hall’s works for voice: Photoskia, Stoicheia and Winter Trees. The last 2 compositions are mostly based on vowels sounds, the classical instruments (saxophone, cello, percussion)  interacting with the feminine vocals in spectral interjections, enhancing or contradicting pitch. Winter Trees is based on the Sylvia Plath poem of the same name, using its vowels sounds only. The composer uses the poem’s assonances and dissonances to morph the syntax into striking ullulations and jaw trills.‘The voice is the acoustic instrument with the greatest potential for timbral transformations’ (Helen Hall, MW#38, p4). The contrast with the less elaborated Orthodox voices is striking and one is left imagining the relation: the universally evocative power of phonemes; the women keeping the community alive; the sacred dimension of music. See Helen Hall’s blog at Art of Frequencies and her recent project Powerlines.

Richard Hayman aka R.I.P. Hayman is an American composer (b 1951, New Mexico) who studied music with John Cage, Ravi Shankar and Philip Corner, a.o. He was a founding editor of the NY edition of Ear Magazine, 1975-1991 [+]. A noted sinologist, he curated Tellus #19 New Music China, 1988. In the mid-1980s, Hayman was exploring the musical dimension of sleep and dream. He organised Dreamsound events for sleeping audiences, what he calls ’social-musical slumber parties’ (MW#38, p24). To put audiences to sleep, he had a secret weapon: ‘I play Bach’s Goldberg Variations which was commissioned by Count Keyserling to put himself to sleep’ (from interview, tr.#14), though, to be honest, he also served camomille tea and warm milk (MW#38, p25). For this issue of Musicworks, he contributes sleeping sounds contingencies: a few volunteers were recorded yawning and snoring, and Hayman re-arranged it in the form of quartets. These 2 exhilarating, unusual tracks are arranged with a collection of sound poet recordings gathered by Canadian bpNichol. The best introduction to the world of sound poet bpNichol is his 1982 cassette Ear Rational (made available for download by the good folks at PennSound) and which contains the wonderful 1969 Dada-lama.

Download