Sunday, July 18, 2010

RA#10 Scared Yet?


At Left: Paul Naschy as Polish nobleman Waldemar Daninsky, about to be killed off (yet again...) in the Spanish Horror "classic" Night Of The Werewolf- one of the silliest of the Daninsky series (there were at least 12 of them) but, of course...they're ALL enjoyable in their own way. Also- note the "death mask" of Senor Molina's here; looks curiously like the prototype for the most horrific Prog moment of all, no?


Radio Anthrocide celebrated its 10th show Saturday night by going out of its way to alienate its listeners. Three-plus solid hours of terrorizing music from film scores, the rampant horror of RIO at its most rebarbative and beautiful, and of course...a visit from Igor Wakhevitch, without whom it is increasingly apparent an RA show on any theme would be woefully inadequate. For those not versed in his incredibly bizarre music, Igor studied under classical composer Messiaen and- as another reviewer has remarked- could best be classified as unclassifiable, a "French Ralph Lundsten" (that's particularly apt, I think) and has been almost completely forgotten by modern music. I am on a one man crusade to rectify this situation (DJ Micah of Public Sensory Radio actually started the crusade, but I knew nothing about his efforts until recently) and will continue to play the Igor oeuvre until the man gets the respect he deserves. I would have to say that as of now, considering all of the work- including Etre Dieu with Salvador Dali and the closest the man came to a "commercial" record- 1979's Kraftwerk-inspired Let's Start- Igor is my very favorite avant-garde composer of all. His music is a freakshow of distemper, spatial-dislocation, repetition, and what a reviewer elsewhere has called a desire "to spend the majority of his time making music designed to fuck with people's heads". Absolutely. There's nothing quite like Igor, and tonight RA played the first side to my favorite record of his, Hathor, though I would also like to point out that Docteur Faust is also an absolute classic- that, yes, will definitely fuck with your head.

Other things of note from Saturday's show include a frenzied and frenetic piece of Electronica by Thomas Bangalter from what remains the all-time worst date movie ever, Gaspar Noe's 2002 bit of French sadism and art house navel gazing, Irreversible. RA also finally managed to play some Univers Zero- one of my absolute favorite bands- who, due to the incredible difficulty of classifying Chamber Rock, have been left out until now. I decided to start at the very pit of the infernal, playing the full 25-minute chamber of horrors called "La Faulx" ("The Scythe"- I think the song is about death and stuff). It was also fun to have an excuse to play the Japanese band Cosmos Factory in their entirety with as perfect an atmospheric piece of music as I've ever heard- one of the rare and few Rock "tone poems" I know of, 1973's remarkably enjoyable An Old Castle Of Transylvania. This is an absolute feast for fans of the Hammond organ, and there are moments of lush and disquieting Mellotron use as well; a very beautiful album from a band that had a completely different sound with each new release.

The weekly "mystery" of an RA broadcast was provided with a track by The Beautiful- whom the story goes is actually the Soft Machine, and that the track "Walter's Dream" was actually stolen from them some time in 1967 by a sleazy LA producer looking to cash in on the Psychedelia crazy and who took the stolen material back to Hollywood on the next plane and hurried up and released the 45 under a fraudulent name. I have no idea if that's true. It is, however, an amazing Rock n' Roll story, and for our purposes- just like the story with Christian Vander and Jannick Top having a magic battle from ancient keeps deep within the Dordogne- it's more fun to pretend it's true and ignore all the fuddy-duddies who want everything to have some kind of fucking rational explanation.

One other very provocative piece of music from this extraordinarily disturbing show was provided by the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble- you really have to see these things yourself to get an idea of what we're talking about here. This is a project of the German avant-gardist Robert Rutman, who has- with the steel cello- produced something spooky and ethereal, wildly discordant but also astonishingly light- like electricity flowing thru the air, the "Bitter Suites" are captivating and mad, glowing and glowering, and when this piece I played builds to its climax...I simply do not have the language to describe the glorious cacophony of this Hellish crescendo. Stick around 'tilll the end of the show for sure to hear this one.

Ok, that's it for this week- next week it's off to Sweden for much, MUCH more mainstream RA, this one being #11 and simply being called Swedish Prog and Psych. Hope to see you then on Cascade Community Radio and here at the RA blog, cheers, - TKR

Setlist For Radio Anthrocide#10 Scared Yet?

1) Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind- Main Title Theme and "Rocky Mountains" from "The Shining".
2) Thomas Bangalter- "Stress" from the soundtrack to "Irreversible"
3) Univers Zero- "La Faulx"
4) Cosmos Factory- "An Old Castle Of Translyvania": A) Forest of the Death; B) The Cursed; C) Darkness of the World; D) An Old Castle of Transylvania
5) Igor Wakhevitch- "Hathor": A) Hymne a Sathanael; B) Grand Sabbat Luciferian; C) Ritual de Guerre des Esprits de la Terre; D) Cris Pour Les Sabbats Infernau et Invocations des Daimons

6) Black Widow- "Come To The Sabbat"
7) Artist Unknown- Music from the Estonian animation classic "Suur Toll"
8) Jannick Top- "La Musique Des Spheres"
9) Chene Noir- "LaVivilesse Et La Mort"
10) Jimmy Page- The (Lost) soundtrack to Kenneth Anger's "Lucifer Rising"

11) White Noise- "Black Mass (Electric Storm In Hell)"
12) Toru Takemitsu- Main title to the film "Woman In The Dunes"
13) The Beautiful (Soft Machine?)- "Walter's Dream"
14) Black Widow- "Mary Clark"
15) Giles, Giles and Fripp- "Murder"

16) Formula 3- "Dies Irae"
17) Goblin- "Sighs" from the soundtrack to "Suspiria"
18) Philippe Besombes- "Avecandista"
19) U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble- Side "A", live performance recorded Aug. 21 1979, the "Bitter Suites"
20) Ute Lemper w/ musical arrangement by Scott Walker- "Lullaby (By-by-by)"




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