August 2006 – Page 8 – { feuilleton }

The music of Igor Wakhévitch

Igor Wakhévitch and feathered friend.

Continuing the Francophile theme, I felt that now was a good time to plumb the mysteries of the enigmatic Igor Wakhévitch. Who? Well… In 20th century music there’s strange and there’s weird and then there’s off-the-wall unclassifiable which is the place where we have to file Igor’s compositions. After half a lifetime spent trawling record shops for unusual music these albums had somehow managed to remain off the radar until a CD reissue set, Donc…, appeared courtesy of Fractal Records and a friend with similarly outré tastes (hi Gav!). The obscurity of these remarkable recordings can’t solely be due to Monsieur Wakhévitch being French; Richard Pinhas, Bernard Szajner and (of course) Magma, have been given enough attention over the years.

So what does this stuff sound like? Thankfully the redoubtable Alan Freeman tackled the problem of describing the albums in Audion (reproduced below), a task I would have found rather daunting. Docteur Faust is probably my favourite, a crazily eclectic and doomy album which lurches from rock freakout to contemporary orchestral/choral to electro-acoustics and back again. Imagine the witch cult from Rosemary’s Baby jamming with Alpha Centauri-era Tangerine Dream while Peter Maxwell Davies and Amon Düül 2 slug it out in the background. The clincher is a great cover by French comic artist Philippe Druillet.

One other notable album that the Donc… collection omits is the 1974 recording of Salvador Dalí’s opera, Être Dieu. Dalí wrote the libretto in 1927 with Federico Garcia Lorca but the piece wasn’t recorded until Wakhévitch provided a score. The result is pretty much the same as Wakhévitch’s other work, with the added bonus of the Surrealist master declaiming and frequently shrieking over the music.

For more information about Donc… and Igor Wakhévitch see the Fractal Records review page.

Continue reading “The music of Igor Wakhévitch”

Atomix by Nike Savvas

Adventures with form in space, the 2006 Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project, considers the richly inventive ways in which contemporary artists use form and colour in their sculptures. It draws together the work of eight Australian artists whose sculptures are essentially abstract, highly imaginative and explore many ideas.

In Nike Savvas’ huge room installation a shimmering haze of vibrating coloured balls suggests the very atoms that are the fundamental structural units of all things. This mesmerising work has an extraordinary optical effect as it oscillates within the gallery space, suggestive of a haze of colour over a hot landscape or an abstract painting that has exploded in the exhibition.

9th August to 17th September.
Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Update: More pictures and information about this exhibit here.

Arthur Lee, 1945–2006

The genius of Captain Beefheart

Mission: unlistenable
His music is described as a metal sock, an action painting and a mad, giant watch—yet it has inspired bands from Talking Heads to the White Stripes. John Harris gets to grips with Captain Beefheart

John Harris
Friday August 4, 2006
The Guardian

IN THE 1980s, American researchers found that the average album was played 1.6 times. Given the new practice of impatiently scouring a CD for one or two highlights and then discarding it, the iPod age has presumably seen that figure tumble, but the basic point remains: most of the music we buy lies pretty much unplayed – either because it is rubbish, or because it says a lot more about our vanity than what we actually like. On the latter score, history’s most shining example may be Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, an allegedly classic album that must surely sit undisturbed in thousands of households. Playing it—or rather, attempting to—is a bit like being in one of those cartoons in which the principal characters cagily open a door, only to find all hell – elephants, possibly, or a speeding train – breaking loose behind it, whereupon they slam it shut again. Its opening moments let you know what you’re in for: a discordant racket, all biscuit-tin drums and guitars that alternately clang and squall, eventually joined—apparently by accident—by a growling man complaining that he “cannot go back to your land of gloom”. Skipping through the remaining 27 tracks does not throw up anything much more uplifting. Indeed, one song finds the same voice rather distastefully evoking the Holocaust: “Dachau blues, those poor Jews/ Dachau blues, those poor Jews/ One mad man, six million lose.”

When this kind of experience happens to a rock critic, it can easily bring on a chill feeling of inadequacy. After all, Beefheart—those in the know rarely use the “Captain”—remains a gigantic influence on so much rock music that has claimed to stand as something more than mere entertainment, from the post-punk likes of Pere Ubu, Talking Heads, Gang of Four and Public Image Limited, through names as varied as Tom Waits and Happy Mondays, and on to such talents as PJ Harvey, Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes. Equally importantly, he is a crucial part of the gnomic culture through which those people (men, mostly) whose lives have been hopelessly afflicted by music commune with one another. It’s not in the film, but the Jack Black character in High Fidelity was surely a Beefheart obsessive.

Continues here.

New Olafur Eliasson

left: The Weather Project,
Tate Modern, 2003.

Olafur Eliasson
Ikon, Birmingham

Alfred Hickling
Thursday August 3, 2006
The Guardian

The Danish artist Olafur Eliasson is best known in this country for the Weather Project, which had visitors to Tate Modern’s turbine hall convinced they were staring into the sun. His installation at Ikon, though smaller, similarly leaves you with spots before your eyes.

There has always been a quasi-scientific element to Eliasson’s work: here he teams up with Boris Oicherman of the University of Leeds to conduct an experiment in colour perception. It’s an old saw that the Inuit recognise over 30 different shades of white. But it’s also worth considering that Russians distinguish two different types of blue, while the English language is unique in having a word for pink. Eliasson’s installation is an intriguing demonstration that, as everyone’s retinas are distinct as their thumb-prints, no two people experience the same colour alike.

It begins with a rainbow frieze of coloured blocks demonstrating the spectrum visible to the human eye, painstakingly prepared by master colourists. You next enter a darkened room, where assistants guide you through the experiment. You peer down the eyepiece of an instrument which displays two differently coloured semicircles, and spin a dial until both appear to be a matching shade. It’s reminiscent of the test they made you take at school for colour-blindness; you half expect to be scrutinised by the nit-nurse afterwards.

The final room projects random results against the wall like a large, illuminated piece of op art. Fortunately these are anonymous, as the last thing you wish to have publicised as an art critic is that your colour perception is rubbish. It’s fascinating proof that some people have difficulty distinguishing lemon from lime. But, naturally, I like to believe that my own contribution was spot on.

• Until September 17, 2006.

Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square
Brindleyplace
Birmingham