PRESS
-
Charlemagne Palestine | Biography
()
Electronic Arts Intermixintensely personal and often violently chargedThroughout the 1970s, Charlemagne Palestine produced a seminal body of performance-based, psychodramatic videotapes in which he activates a ritualistic use of physicality, motion and sound to achieve an outward articulation of internal states. Intensely personal and often violently charged, these phenomenological exercises are characterized by a visceral enactment of physical and psychological catharses. Performing in isolation with a hand-held, moving camera, Palestine taps the body as a conduit for the self. The very titles of his pieces -- Internal Tantrum (1975), Running Outburst (1975) -- suggest literal and metaphorical catalysts for release or escape from confinement. Movement and sound, as they relate to the body and the voice, are the vehicles through which Palestine expels internal energy. Ritualistic vocal expressions -- hypnotic chants, trance-inducing tones -- become physical translations of anguish and pain, as does the use of the video as an extension of the body. Running frenetically with the camera or strapping it to a moving motorcycle, Palestine uses motion as metaphor. Challenging identity and perception, he positions the viewer behind the camera, in a subjective point of view. Seeing through his eyes, moving with his body, the viewer is both participant......
-
Devendra Banhart | OH ME OH MY... | Review
()
Jerry Blue | posted to Young God Records Discussion BoardThis will be a short, uneducated review from a person who has never heard of Banhart before: So here is a review of the upcoming Devendra Banhart CD coming here October 28th, 2002. Don't buy it! hahaha! kidding! I had no idea what to expect from this CD. I had no idea who this person is... Listening to it was a complete surprise. I was very happy to get a copy of this CD, and after each track I was curious to hear more and more - to the point of excitement. This has not happened to me while hearing a CD for the first time since my first listen to Acid Mothers Temple. Don't compare the two though.... Devendra is musically blues, folk, rock, etc. His voice is amazing... A strange high voice, not similar - but in the vein of Jimmy Scott with more of a Syd Barret sound. The music is wonderful, acoustic guitar... The voice is great, etc. What could ruin the CD? - The lyrics, which are also great. The CD is really great. I even love the production quality. I hope that doesn't change before......
-
Davendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My | Review
()
Dream Magazine #3 | George Parsons22 songs spilling out of this cracked eccentric soul Such a unique mix of influences, from T-Rex when they were acoustic and still Tyrannosaurus Rex, early folk blues, Daniel Johnston, and a thinner more androgynous Nick Drake, but more acid damaged, soul on his sleeve naked, and lo-fi frail than any of them. This has the same inexorable will to exist that makes the seedling burst up through the asphalt. An ancient soul in a young body scratching out these fragmentary concise psychodramatic songlets like 8mm movies all grainy, wobbling and vivid to the point of being nearly unforgettable. Listen once you’ll be startled; listen twice you’ll be hooked....
-
Michael Gira | Interview
()
in-nyc.com | Professor JefThe Intimate Horror of Michael GiraAt first blush, his imposing frame, strong handshake, suspenders, and cowboy hat could well cast Michael Gira as a sharecropper cut from the pages of Steinbeck. Close up, his quick, blue eyes quietly mock fools, while his broad, rotting grin strives to put his prey at ease like a real-life Hannibal Lecter. As the principal behind Young God Records, Gira's first two personas rub uneasy elbows, as he ambitiously peddles uncompromising music that demands attention, not a toe tap or even a hum. Taken together, Michael Gira is a living work of art, an exercise in American gothic, a true musical genius, and quite unlike any other person that I will ever meet. Over the past twenty years, Gira's music has changed its face twice, but has maintained a taut focus on his lyrical thematic: the base and fragile elements at the core of the human condition. His is a dramaturgy of intimate horror and wakeful terror, exposed without a trace of moralism or even humanism. In his early years with Swans, Gira and his cohorts invented a musical idiom of striking immediacy, pairing his baritone's sharp and nasty catalogue of human......
-
Charlemagne Palestine | Interview
()
Hungry Host | Marcus BoonSearching for the Golden SoundI spoke to Charlemagne Palestine by telephone, he in Belgium, in New York in the summer of 2001, after his return from a trip to Iceland. Palestine, as he himself says, met Pandit Pran Nath outside of the circle of musicians and composers associated with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, although his work is animated by a similar interest in minimalist strategies for composition and improvisation, and a concern with the transcendental qualities of sound. If you don't know Palestine's work, his interview with Brian Duguid should set you straight. For myself, I've never witnessed any of Palestine's legendary live performances, but I love the CDs of Strumming Music, Schlingen Blangen and Karenina, each of which overflows with euphoric intensity. In conversation, Palestine's voice has an extraordinary musical quality, full of spaces, half finished phrases that convey his meaning musically and poetically, always feeling their way beyond the words. M: How did you first meet Pran Nath? CP: It was at the end of the sixties ... I was living on the upper west side of Manhattan in a neighborhood that was known for jazz musicians. A neighbor of mine told......