Aorta
Allerseelen : Flamme (Ö,200?)*°°
The title of this album is “flames”, and refers to the “flames of inspiration” which derived mostly from literature, with texts the German Friedrich Bernard Marvy (a solar ritual from “die drei Schwäne” called “das Erwachen im Walde”), from the Rumanian writer Simion Lefter, the German writer Friedrich Hölderlin (“Hyperion”), a hymn by Ricarda Huch, a poem by the Andalusian Juan Ramon Jimenez (from “Fuego y Sentimento”), the German warrior Herybert Menzel, and the filosopher/writer Friendrich Nietzsche (“Also sprach Zarathustra”), as well as a song from the wave group DAF (or Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft : “Als wärs das letzte Mal”). The cover is based upon a Man Ray photograph. Translations in English are provided in the booklet.
The music is meant to accompany the literature, mostly expressed by spoken word, with theme-loops on guitar (1), and always rhythmical, almost gothic-industrial, melodically never too complex (keyboards, guitars, electronic rhythms,..). Track 2 for instance is a different version of the first track, and sounds like a ritual folk hymn (acoustic guitars, colourful rhythms, overtone keyboard loop, and shouting voice). Here and there are used also chamber (cello,..) and neo-classical loops. “Sturmlied” is suddenly different, using a more harsh pop rhythm on guitar, semi-flamenco pop, a track which I personally like much less. But considering a few other rhythmic fragments elsewhere, dark and industrial, sometimes danceable I understand what it’s doing here. The album for the largest part fits less with the acid and even the neo-folk on this webpage, but directs a bit more towards the industrial/gothic territories.
Ahnstern Allerseelen : Hallstatt (Ö,2007)***'
Gerhard Petak here goes back to the famous nearby village of his childhood, a long time unreachable from the outside village (in Austria) where the elements of death and circumstances were more dominating than elsewhere "people died in quicksand or by falling rock when trying to travel to the village"), a place also famous for its painted skulls that contained the names and some characteristics of the deceased who once inhabited them. This particular attention to the skulls as a former local ritual reveals a great respect for life with a balance in and with the death in mind, with respect. The musical impact on this theme inspiration goes in two directions. All tracks are poems (Herman Hesse, Goethe, Friedrich Hebbel, Herman von Gilm) and narrations (R.N.Taylor from Changes is guest on one track) that get rhythmical musical pulses. While on the first half this means mostly a rich body of electronic rhythms, fuzz bass, desolate harmonica touches, or rhythmic acoustic guitars combined with some electronica, with some organic sections, always driven by rhythmic pulses as a balance between body and mind, almost danceable. The instrumental part gives the right power and magical balance to the hypnotic power of mind with its word creating some ritual confirmations. Especially the track “Hörst du die Toten singen/do you hear the dead sing” is inspired from the painted skulls theme and is for me, like the skulls themselves, an uplift of the theme of decay into an ode to life, almost reaching something optimistic, in peace within its darker fundament. Sometimes the dark fuzz bass provides the musicwith a more progressive touch. The later half of the album uses also some of the darker earlier memories to the place where he lived, (with fragments of some of the oldest Allerseelen recordings), showing perhaps the overwhelmed youngster by unrealistic fantasies of not knowing where to put such confronting themes into life energy ; here such thoughts are more overwhelming, and the music itself becomes darker, desolate and repetitive, stylistically being more related to neo-gothic industrial. The most interesting Allerseelen release I heard so far.
