Silence at the hunting lodge

No blogging for quite some time. University exams and almost unbearable summer heat prevented all activity. Merzbau officially now slips into summer hiatus. Back in full by Fall with some interesting collaborations. There will be a couple of more posts in a about a weeks time mostly concerning shares to last you through summer.

Next Saturday [July 5th] I am leaving for a trip abroad. Milan, Paris, London [1 day stop] and Venice. Most time will be spend in Paris [about a week]. Two dear friends living there provided me with invaluable info [thank you so much losfeld and continuo]. If you have anything related to these towns, places to visit, record stores, galleries, museums, exhibitions, book stores and so on, you feel like sharing, please drop me a line. Keep in mind though that I have been already more than once in London and Venice and only something really special or a current event will be of interest concerning them. Paris and Milan are Tabula Rasa so anything is more than welcome.

A pile of new arrivals at Merzbau evolving place, blessed are the trades! Moorman’s box set [at last!], two Gandera tapes, two Comelade tapes, one cassette tribute to Crowley, three Coil, Berrocal, four Silvester Anfang, about ten Graveyards and Graveyards-related releases, Meads Of Asphodel, Joe Jones, Michel Chion, Teiji Ito, Daniel Kientzy, Pierre Henry, Gurdjieff’s Harmonic Development and more.

A decent tape deck now obtained, up and running, making dmtls able of enjoying cassette obscurities.

Reading Breton, Petropoulos and Bataille.

Tulse Luper suitcases on Greek cable TV!

All in all, everything is ok with Merzbau, there was only too little time and not the right mood for much blogging, so don’t worry, just in case you did.

fun with nuns in town!

Fun with Nuns on stage for another sonic assault, prepare!

31st of May @ Department Of Music Studies of A.U.T.H. university. Their act will be part of a Cage-ian Musicircus. No more info on other appearances, if you have any drop me a line.

sardines can opened to reveal a bunch of music

Another big update to merzbau trade / sell page. 44 items added [!]. Diamanda Galás, Tunguska-Guska [Ultra Rare], more Blood Stereo, more Residents, more Death In June, a couple of rare experimental/noise compilations, Pere Ubu, a rare Uchihashi Kazuhisa VHS video, a miscellany of vinyl [7" and 12"] for starters and many more. Come on in, take a look.

Hermann Nitsch- Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters (cd20+21+22)

Not in the mood for much writing at the moment. For today a triple Hermann Nitsch treat.

cd 20 - tag 2

cd 21 - tag 2

cd 22 - tag 2

EMW 08

I got to Warehouse ‘Art Factory’, where the festival was held, on the first day at about six twenty [opening was arranged for six o' clock sharp]. I felt that it was not a really great idea to attend the opening of the festival given the fact that I was not very interested in the first day’s programme. Unfortunately I had the right feeling. As soon as I got there, everyone was going up and down the place in fury trying to make the last checks, the last arrangements. Such things where to be expected but I was optimistic. It was about an hour+ later that we finally heard a sound. No announce, nothing. Someone from the organizing crew sat behind the console and kicked off the performance. Acousmatic [!] Music - International Selection read the programme and I expected to actually see the composers at work, not just their works performed. There was a constant coming and going along with chattering and laughter [that was a thing about all afternoons in the event] as if nothing was going on. It was far from ideal circumstances to listen to these acousmatic works which at least demanded attention. To be honest though I was not impressed by their quality. I left the place just in time to miss the opening speech, that would bore even more. End of day one.

Thursday. Having previous experience with Acousmatic Music - International Selection [at six also] I decided to go to the festival a little later to catch with Karlheinz Stockhausen feature starting at 19.30. It was about eight when I entered the ‘Art Factory’ and Acousmatic Music was still going strong! Stockhausen feature and the following …in 3 movements performance were mysteriously canceled/postponed [never to find out what actually happened]. Then there was uninspired video art for some ten more minutes and after that flute, saxophone, clarinet, electronics and video performance by Demetrius Spaneas. He was in my opinion overtheatrical in his moves but I enjoyed his set, probably because I was at last seeing something [see photos]

After that I was expecting one of the stand outs of the festival [in my opinion at least], Gerard Pape plays Gerard Pape. It was at this point that things started going seriously wrong. Pape was there but just to announce that due to a strike at the airport he was not able to get in time here to make a soundcheck and that he would play his set Friday evening [see photo]. This moment after, it became clear that

The Tone Generation

Check this:

Over 10 programmes, artist/musician Ian Helliwell delves into his archive to look at the development of electronic music right across the world in the classic era of analogue technology. Starting in Europe and finishing up in the Southern Hemisphere, he will be playing vintage tracks from celebrated and overlooked composers from each country.

6 programmes already completed [Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium, Scandinavia]. Next programme announced: #7, Eastern Europe. Stay tuned here.

D.D.A.A. play Ronsard

This obscure group of radical experimental noise makers used improvisation and collage to craft strange sounds and deconstructed songs for highly creative music that is as far off the path of conventions as that of similar but more known visionaries like the Residents and Nurse With Wound. In fact, DDAA roughly began the same time as NWW in the late ’70s, started by three visual artists, Sylvie Martineau, Jean-Philippe Fee, and Jean-Luc Andre in Lion sur Mer, France. The multi-talented trio originally formed Illusion Productions to create plastic sculpture and other various artistic pursuits and DDAA became the musical arm of Illusion. Déficits des Années Antérieures, their full name, translates roughly in English as “last year’s deficit,” though perhaps more appropriate is the fact that their initials are an anagram of Dada, that pre-Surrealism art movement at the time of World War I. As none of the three were trained musicians, their music had a distinct naïve quality of outsider art and with few noticeable influences, exists on a plane of its own. Like others whose music is too uncompromisingly different to become commercial, DDAA began releasing recordings under the umbrella of Illusion Productions.

[via The Thing On The Doorstep blog]

Here is presented the cd version of DDAA play Ronsard. There are five tracks featured in it, two from the original LP [tracks 1 & 2], two from the limited 7″ [tracks 4 & 5] and one bonus track [track 3, All my mistress Marie]. As soon as I found it in Athens I decided to upload it having no knowledge of the post on The Thing On The Doorstep. I finally made my post to give a chance of obtaining it in better quality (FLAC) [to my best knowledge, it is OOP in all formats] and for the bonus track. There is much more info and sounds to be found in two of the most interesting blogs around, my friend continuo’s and The Thing On The Doorstep by fellow minded Cranio, I only recently discovered. Thank you for all these great shares.

DDAA play Ronsard

[part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4]

take a walk at the galleries

Due to the nature of my trip to and business in Athens apart from attending EMW I paid a visit to a variety of artists and galleries. The following selection is of the most interesting ones

Nikos Lytras in National Gallery

A great exhibition showcasing and documenting the work of Nikos Lytras who unfortunately died at a young age and left only a small body of work. What lacks though in volume it makes up in importance. One of the greats that is frequently ignored. On the brink of Greek modernism Nikos Lytras was a daring pioneer. From his portraits and nudes to his land and seascapes you can admire his full, fluid brush stroke, bearing strength and emotion, his stroke that was rejected at the time as dirty and filthy. A rare event of great importance.

Until 2th of June

Dafni Rokou in Astrolavos Gallery

With studies in photography and cinema Dafni Rokou has created about 30 pieces [varying sizes] using mixed technique, for her exhibition in Astrolavos gallery. This part of her work [unfortunately I am unfamiliar with her other projects or activities] is simply amazing. Dark, dusted, surreal, disturbing at times visions staged and executed in first phase [I presume] photographically. Greatly influenced by the Russian avant garde of the 20s, Rokou does very little to hide the cinematic feel her work evokes. Witkin is there [even Alan Tex] along with a variety of references and influences all creatively filtered and combined to form the amalgam of Dafni’s work. The concept and main inspiration for this unit of pieces are the undelivered letters and packages trapped forever within four Post Offices scattered around the globe, that closed on the same day on exactly the same time. Stories left untold, wishes that never reached their destinations. Hopes, fears, events, places and faces. I actually bought a piece at the exhibition [shown below], I wish I could afford more. I will try to get in touch with Dafni Rokou and get back to you with more on her and her art.

Until 24th of May.

Also [worth mentioning]:

Nansi Sousoula also at Astrolavos [until 24th of May] and Stelios Faitakis at The Breeder [Eumorfopoulou 6, Psirri, until 30th of May]

Hermann Nitsch- Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters (cd18+19)

cd 18 - tag 2

cd 19 - tag 2

Note on the photo:

Relitti della 122 Aktion al Burgtheater
Fondazione Morra Palazzo dello Spagnuolo
via Vergini 19 - Napoli
dal 13/4/07 al 30/9/07                                             [via]

a casket full of aural oddities #1, Paraffin Affliates

A casket full of aural oddities, this is the title of a new merzbau post series, inaugurated by the present one. I could have started a separate blog for these [I've seen others doing so] but I chose to stick with my current entity. Merzbau after all was, is and will remain a casket full of oddities.

There is no clear line to separate what belongs to these series and what not. Generally small run releases limited or not, sonic products on which little, fuzzy or incoherent information is available, outsider sound art, found music and in general everything dmtls considers obscure or weird enough will find its place here. Frequently bought in large volumes and/or rather cheap, found in all places possible these recordings have a special beauty of their own.

The idea for these posts came after a package was received from Finland, a package I could only describe as A casket full of aural oddities.

Presented here are two cdrs from the aforementioned package.

Paraffin Affiliates is [or was, unsure about their current state as the last signs of their existence found over the net, date five to six years ago] a Finnish free jazz impro/noise unit. Our music is noisy and furious, and yet intuitive. It is more a question of variations in intensity than of structure says Joonas Virtasalo, clarinetist of the band and he is putting his finger exactly on how Paraffin Affiliates works sound like. Squeaks and skreaks, noise and chaos. Wild free improvisations featuring clarinet, guitars, bass, drums and even accordion in a couple of tracks, make for a study of variations in intensity while retaining that little something [structure of some kind?] that keep these recordings from falling apart , from making another dull noise statement

.

demo 2002 [1 / 2]

demo/promo 2003 [1 / 2]