Heiner Goebbels - Ou Bien le Débarquement Désastreux (1995)

Heiner Goebbels' and Boubakar Djebate's "Ou bien le débarquement désastreux" (Or the Hapless Landing) is a melodrama, text spoken over or against music. There are three strands of text, spoken mostly in French (Andre Wilms), on the subject of forests: Joseph Conrad's Congo Diary; Francis Ponge's meditative Pinewood Notebook of 1940; and Heiner Mueller's Herakles 2, describing the hero's search for the Hydra ('the forest is the beast').

There are two strands of music: African, or more precisely Senegalese (Djebate), and contemporary Western (Goebbels). The virtuose Djebate plays the kora, a harp constructed from a pumpkin, and a very well-tempered harp it is too, with nothing 'primitive' about it. Sira Djebate sings traditional Senegalese Griots quite exquisitely. Against them are ranged trombone, electric guitar, keyboard-sampler and - bridging the divide - the Daxophon, a small piece of wood sounded by a bow and amplified: the range of jungular noises it produces it simply bewildering.

As in all melodrama there is conflict between word and note: it is more difficult for the human brain to absorb the two when the words are not simply set to music. There is also a conflict between two musical languages. At first I resented Goebbels' jazz-based, somewhat brutal modernism intruding on the less familiar Senegalese sound-world; gradually it became more African, with the trombonist Yves Robert sounding as though he had long been studying the cries of elephants. While nothing so vulgar as a synthesis was achieved, African rhythms eventually tempered and somehow tamed European inventions, just as Ponge's vaguely upbeat musings conversely tempered the terrors of Conrad and Mueller. That is just one reaction: as in all the best journeys into forests, there was no telling exactly where you were going. But at just over an hour, it was a musical journey that gripped the imagination from first to last. Rodney Milnes, The Times 5/7/95

1. Longtemps Il Crut Encore (0:50)

2. Samedi, 28. Juin (3:01)

3. Les Premiers Jours (1:16)

4. Jeudi, 3. Juillet (3:14)

5. Longtemps, Longtemps, Longtemps (0:38)

6. Vendredi, 4. Juillet (1:51)

7. Samedi, 5. Juillet (0:51)

8. Comme Le Vent Augmentait (1:35)

9. Mardi, 8. Juillet (4:21)

10. Cette Forêt (2:21)

11. Vendredi, 25. Juillet 1890 (1:36)

12. Il Eut Du Mal (3:58)

13. Mardi, 29 (2:49)

14. Fili (2:21)

15. S'adapter Et Ne Pas S'adapter (2:38)

16. 3. Août 1890 (1:14)

17. 9 Heures Après (0:20)

18. Dangoma (3:07)

19. Il Comprit (3:42)

20. Mort Aux Mères (1:51)

21. Koulanja (2:15)

22. Haches, Couteaux, Tentacules (4:26)

23. 7. Août 1940 - Après-Midi (2:33)

24. Le Soir (1:40)

25. Manilo (2:03)

26. 8. Août 1940 (1:46)

27. 13 Août 1940 - Matin (2:25)

28. 20. Août 1940 (3:46)

29. Sunyatta (2:45)

30. Dans Le Silence Blanc (0:51)

31. Fin Du Bois Du Pins (0:47)

Moussa Sissoko - djembe
Alexandre Meyer - electric guitar, table-guitar, daxophone 
Boubakar Djebate - kora, vocals
Yves Robert - trombone
Sira Djebate - vocals
André Wilms - voice
Xavier Garcia - keyboards, sampler
Heiner Goebbels - sampler

Music by Boubakar Djebate & Heiner Goebbels 
Texts by:
Francis Ponge (tracks: 23, 26 to 28, 31)
Heiner Müller (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 19, 20, 22, 30)
Joseph Conrad (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17) 

Released by ECM Records in 1995.

link@320

Heiner Goebbels & Alfred 23 Harth - Live à Victoriaville (1988)

Double Avenue, an old enemy of the Ewings, was kind enough to provide fine rips of some old LPs from the Dallas vinyl collection. He started off with 3 fine LPs, randomly chosen, which we will be posting in the following days. Hopefully, he will be ripping other LPs, just for the love of mankind.

To kick off, we selected this very emotional recording of Goebbels and Harth live in Victoriaville. This is a sort of "best of" by the duo, with tunes from several previous outfits and records. Fans of Cassiber and the duo will recognize most of the songs, although their music is here presented in a very stark and stripped down form. The audience is very excited and obviously knowledgeable of the night's repertoire. A very emotional and exciting performance.

A1. Los Campesinos
A2. The Ballad Of The Durable Grey Goose
A3. The Laughing And The Crying Man
A4. Lightning Over Moscow
A5. Imagine You're A Dolphin
B1. On Suicide
B2. Le Rappel Des Oiseaux
B3. The Peking Opera
B4. At Last I Am Free

Alfred 23 Harth: saxs, clarinets, trombone, voice

Heiner Goebbels: piano, synthesizer, clarinet, sax, voice, chinese violin, percussion

Recorded live in Victoriaville in 2-10-1987

Released by Victo Records in 1988

link@320

Heiner Goebbels / Heiner Müller - Der Mann im Fahrstuhl (1988)

Using the texts of playwright Heiner Muller and collecting a wide range of imaginative musicians, Heiner Goebbels constructed a fascinating music-theater piece that mixes languages and musical styles. The text, read and sung by Arto Lindsay, concerns the thoughts and fears of an employee summoned to his boss' office and has something of a Brazil-like aura about it. Perhaps coincidentally, Lindsay interjects some Brazilian songs into the proceedings. But the highlight is the performance by this stellar ensemble, ranging from free to punkishly tinged jazz-rock to quasi-African. There are outstanding contributions from guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, and the late Don Cherry on trumpet, voice, and the African hunter's guitar known as the doussn'gouni. Goebbels brews a rich stew of overlapping languages and styles in a dense matrix that creates an appropriate feeling of angst, but never loses a sly sense of humor. If anything, some of The Man in the Elevator is reminiscent of Carla Bley's better known work and fans of hers as well as curious rock listeners should have no problem enjoying this one.
Brian Olewnick

Charles Hayward - drums, percussion
Fred Frith - guitar, bass
Heiner Goebbels - piano, synthesizer
Ned Rothenberg - saxophone, bass clarinet
George Lewis - trombone
Ernst Stötzner - voice
Arto Lindsay - voice, guitar
Don Cherry - voice, trumpet, strings [doussn' gouni]

Written By Heiner Müller
Released in 1988 by ECM Records

link@320

V/A - Angelica '95 (1996)

1. Lol Coxhill - The Red Flag
2. Heiner Goebbels - Die Befreiung des Prometheus
3. Jon Rose + Otomo Yoshihide - Ping pong, King Kong
4. Maarten Altena Ensemble - America is Waiting
5. Steve Beresford + Jon Raskin + Otomo Yoshihide - Release the Bats
6. Phil Minton + Veryan Weston - And Who's Next?
7. Steve Adams + Pat Thomas - SAT
8. Rova - Freedom in Fragments (extract)
9. Specchio Ensemble - Appendice alla Suite no. 1 (Remix)
10. Oban Sax Quartet - Mubak
11. Phil Minton + Veryan Weston - Elephant
12. Rova: Freedom in Fragments.
13. Specchio Ensemble: Collettivo Diretto #5
14. N.O.R.M.A. + Chris Cutler + Phil Minton - Trains tango
15. Heiner Goebbels - Die Befreiung des Prometheus (extract)
16. Mike cooper + Lol Coxhill + Chris Cutler + Edoardo Marraffa + Luigi Mosso + Larry Ochs + Jon Raskin + Pat Thomas - It Slipped my Mind
17. Lol Coxhill - Jumping Flea
18. Lol Coxhill - Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
19. Lol Coxhill - BMT Pot Pourri
20. Phil Minton + Veryan Weston - Copswebs
21. Rova - Freedom in Fragments (extract)
22. Jon Rose + Otomo Yoshihide - TV Shopping
23. Phil Minton + Veryan Weston - Rain or Hail
24. Lol Coxhill – Retreat

Recorded 2-7 March 1995, Angelica Festivale Internazionale di Musica, Quinta Edizione, Bologna.

link @320

See the release documenting the 1991 edition (Angelica '91) at Lucky's Cut-Out

Cassiber/Ground Zero - Live in Tokyo (1997)

"This recording documents Cassiber's first and only visit to Tokyo, where they gave concerts on two consecutive evenings in October 1992. There were to be only two more appearances - both at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon that December - before the band, after ten years of continuous work, quietly ceased to exist. Just before they left for Japan they invited Shinoda Masami to join them for the concerts, a collaboration that was both rewarding and pleasurable. A little over a month later he suddenly died at the age of 34, leaving the promise that he and Cassiber had exchanged for a second collaboration never to be fulfilled.
The second CD is a collection of pieces by Otomo Yoshihide and Ground Zero, which takes the live recordings of Cassiber's live performance in Tokyo as source material and reworks them by way of sampling, remixing, addition, and re-performance. It is an expression of Otomo's respect and homage to Cassiber and to Shinoda Masami and, as the last recording under the name Ground Zero, marks the end of the group which has been the main project for the past seven years". Noda Shigenori and Chris Cutler.

Personnel:
Disc 1
Christoph Anders: vocals, guitar, samples.
Heiner Goebbels: vocals, guitar, violin, piano, samples.
Chris Cutler: drums, percussion.
Shinoda Masami: alto sax.

Disc 2
Otomo Yoshihide: turntables, rhythm box, guitar, hard disk, CD-J.
Masuko Tatsuki: DX7
Mizuhiro: mono-poly
Nagata Kazunao: ARP 2600
Haco: vocals
Yagi Michiyo: 21 string koto, teeth clack
Sachiko M: sampler
Uemura Masahiro: drums
Hirose Junji: tenor sax
Naruyoshi Kikuchi: tenor sax
Yasuhiro Otani: computer
Chino Syuichi: piano, organ.
Otani Yasuhiro: computerNasuno Mitsuru : bassYoshigaki Yasuhiro: drums.

Check comments for details

link @320 (here again)
link @320 (here again)

Check some other records by members of Cassiber here, there, elsewhere and in this location, courtesy of Lucky's Cut-Out and Spring's Spring Any Day Now.