Manafonistas

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Zwei Frauen musizieren an seltsamen Orten. Sie eröffnen eine Stunde mit Musik, die sich fernab vertrauter Koordinaten bewegt. Der Preis dafür: der Underground.

Hier Details zu Parallel 41:
CD+DVD Baskaru karu:21
Release date: July 2012
www.baskaru.com

New York and Naples on the same wavelength

The 41st parallel runs an imaginary course from New York to Naples, Italy, where reside JULIA KENT and BARBARA DE DOMINICIS, respectively. Therefore, you could say they are both on the same geographical wavelength. However, they also share the same musical wavelength, as they are both quite fond of delicate ambiances, loops, and spontaneity.

Cellist Julia Kent weaves dense sonic fabrics using real-time looping techniques she truly masters. Poet/singer/electronic artist Barbara De Dominicis likes to integrate live-treated field recordings to her inspired vocal improvisations.

To these two ingredients – Kent and De Dominicis – we must add a third one: the locations. The tracks on this debut album were improvised and recorded in 2009-2010, mainly in Italy, in unusual locations with promising acoustics: a fortress, an abandoned tunnel, a wool factory, a farmhouse. The artists inhabited these places for a while, and in turn these places inhabit the music, through microphone and hydrophone recordings of their surrounding area. Each piece has its own unique character.

To the main CD (8 tracks + 1 bonus track, total duration: 44 minutes), the Baskaru label is adding a DVD featuring DAVIDE LONARDI’s documentary film Faraway Close (35 minutes). The filmmaker followed the duo on their journey. His film includes bits from interviews and performances, panoramic views, and archive documents.

This entry was posted on Dienstag, 19. Juni 2012 and is filed under "Blog". You can follow any responses to this entry with RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 Comment

  1. Michael Engelbrecht:

    Einige Bands dieser Nachtstunde werden wohl in der Musik von Can eine Inspirationsquelle gefunden haben, oder zumindest eine gewisse Parallele wahrnehmen, was die Lust an der Improvisation betrifft. The Independant schreibt zu den in England gerade erschienenen LOST TAPES:

    Can were the archetypal „krautrock“ group – ironically, given that much of their best work featured either Malcolm Mooney, an American, or Damo Suzuki, from Japan, as vocalists. Students of Stockhausen, blessed with renegade jazz and classical chops, and fully aware of the possibilities opened up by John Cage, they brought a feverishly questing spirit to rock music.

    Rather than the blues roots underpinning most Anglo-American rock, they drew on minimalism, serialism, the churning motor-pulse of the Velvet Underground, and ethnic strains then unheard in Western pop. The result was some of the most striking, individual music ever made. The earliest pieces included here, such as „Millionenspiel“, find them forging a unique sound already at an acute angle to the prevailing British and US modes, using drummer Jaki Liebezeit’s urgent, metronomic beats to carry startling sonic excursions of guitar and organ. They worked best as a unit, improvising collectively to find the synergistic core of an idea: by their own admission, the „freedom“ subsequently afforded by multi-track overdubbing leached that power from their later recordings.

    But these recordings are pure Can at their most potent, with menacing, mantra-like chants alongside fractured ambient soundscapes, „aural meditations“ and crunching psych-rock riffing. In some tracks can be glimpsed the youthful stages of later Can classics such as „Vitamin C“, „Sing Swan Song“ and „Vernal Equinox“, while the use of certain sounds and tones allows one to date other works fairly precisely, as in the tremulous organ tone that fixes „Abra Cada Braxas“ firmly in the Future Days era; and there are devastating live versions of favourites like „Spoon“.

    Yet despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours. We shall not hear their like again.


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