Jul

22

On ‘The Memphis Album’, Guy Sebastian nimbly sidesteps earlier issues of writer’s block by travelling to Ardent Studios in Memphis to record fourteen gems of 60’s southern soul, using many of the musicians who had worked on the original recordings. With many definitive classic songs - Knock on Wood, In the Midnight Hour, Soul Man, Dock of the Bay, Take Me To The River - The Memphis Album is a superbly skillful record, less interpretative than evocative, with all the ingredients perfectly balanced to win an international audience for the Australian Idol winner.

Kicking off with the Sam & Dave classic ‘Soul Man’, Sebastian immediately shows his intentions are sincere, respectful, as he fills the song with grace, power, and dignity. The instant immediacy of the backing music makes authenticity unquestionable - there is no mistaking that Stax sound - fat horn lines, funky guitars, and syncopated percussion lock the listener into a perfect groove until the very end of the record. By using many of the original musicians of the era - Steve Cropper, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, Steve Potts, Lester Snell, and Dave Smith - Sebastian has created a perfect platform to display his impressive range of expression and technical prowess.

What is lacking in all these recordings, though, is what makes all of the originals versions so essential. Memphis soul has deservedly achieved mythical importance in the canon of American music. In the 1960’s the small southern city was a mecca for southern musicians; Stax and other local labels produced music colored by racial tension, economic hardship, and the prevalent sense of institutionalized injustice. Less sugar-coated than the Motown sound, Memphis soul uniquely reflected its geography and time, by brilliantly combining the sweeping inclusive beauty of gospel with secularism, carnality and outrage, creating a distinct and compelling sound independent of any specific artist. The original versions of the songs on ‘The Memphis Album’ - by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Al Green, and others - stand tall as a heady mixture of earthiness and anger, lust and hope, joy and sadness; each song imbued with a vital urgency that made the listener feel the artists have LIVED the lyrics, that their own passion and pain bled into the songs.

Of course it is unfair to criticize Sebastian - born two decades and an ocean away from Memphis - for being unable to nail this nebulous vibe, the ’spirit of the times’. What Sebastian brings to the table is a wonderful voice, heartfelt respect and skillful presentation. His range, style and tone are all remarkable, and his technique so polished that it could be argued (at the risk of being blasphemous) that he occasionally improves on the original recordings, sweetly gliding through parts shouted by the originals. With the exception of an insipid ‘Under the Boardwalk’, all of the selections are top-notch, adeptly produced, excellently performed, with Sebastian pouring himself whole-heartedly into the material.

‘The Memphis Album’ quickly went double platinum in Australia, and Sebastian toured Australia with the MGs as his support band. Featuring the Memphis ‘funk brothers’ of Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper, the concerts were hugely successful, culminating in a live concert DVD; the rave reviews generated an international release of the album and plans for worldwide touring.

‘The Memphis Album’ is an excellent introduction to Memphis soul for neophytes, and a good introduction to Guy Sebastian for those unfamiliar with his talent or intellectually averse towards any ‘Idol’ releases. For diehard soul collectors, the backing tracks alone by the MGs and Memphis horns should be enough incentive to pick up the CD; Guy Sebastian’s sheer talent will be a nice revelation. Recommended.

Jun

30

Crunk, that particular high-energy party hip-hop built around looped drum machines and simple chants, broke through into the mainstream a few years ago with massive hits by OUtkast, Lil Jon, Bone Crusher, and the noteably addictive Oscar-winner’It’s Hard Bein’ A Pimp’ from ‘Hustle and Flow’. Fearless Records, looking for another opportunity to expand their ‘Punk Goes..’ series, came up with the concept of ‘Punk Goes Crunk’, a chance for punk rock bands to reinterpret and perform crunk hits. On paper, maybe, it seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately Fearless were unable to follow through on the idea, producing instead this indifferent and unnecessary CD.

First of all, ‘Punk Goes Crunk’ really does not live up to its title. Is it crunk? Strictly speaking, the song selection is uninformed - for example, the 2Pac and Arrested Development songs predate the development of the genre, while the candy-floss pop hits of Will Smith and Rihanna really don’t fit either. Well then, is it punk? Not really. There is not a single note on this record in the tradition of the Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, or Black Flag: the groups (includIng Say Anything, Forever The Sickest Kids, New Found Glory, The Maine, Hot Rod Circuit, My American Heart, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, All Time Low, The Devil Wears Prada, The Secret Handshake, and Set Your Goals) seem to share a common historical sensibility - punk began with the power pop of Green Day, and reached its pinnacle with their unintentional bastard prodigy, emo and screamo.

All these songs are well-produced, but as Joey from D.O.A. likes to say, ‘you can’t polish a turd’; and most of this is unpolishable…only Hot Rod Circuit lays don a successful track, wisely putting Snoop Dogg’s ‘Gin and Juice’ into a bluesy arrangement that actually works in a different context. But the rest of this record is really unlikeable, both in general and specific terms. Singing lyrics meant to be rapped enfeebles the poetry and neutralizes its rhythmic underpinnings, while bastardizing production styles to mimic samples is simply sonic chicanery that doesn’t fool the ear. There are so many individual poor decisions here, it is hard to know where to start - the decision to make ‘Put Yo Hood Up’ by Set Your Goals the lead-off track, with it’s vocal delivery deliberately mimicking Yoda from Star Wars; the weak inclusion of the theme to ‘Men in Black’ by Forever The Sickest Kid; the astonishingly limp Rihanna-cover ‘Umbrella’ by All Time Low. If Say Anything’s intention was to lampoon Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘Got My Money’ they succeeded marvelously, trashing both the song and the concept of a punk band covering it. Scary Kids Scaring Kids and The Secret Handshake also deserve dishonorable mention for their wretched versions of Skee-Lo and Biggie tracks; it is a relief when the overrated New Found Glory finally ends the disc, serving up a generic version of Arrested Development’s uncrunky ‘Tennessee’ without even a hint of creative involvement.

‘Punk Goes Crunk’ may actually be cherished by a few collectors in the future, as a nostalgia novelty resurrected to give a few disbelieving belly laughs at the cheesy artwork and misguided music (suggested reissue title - ‘White Men Can’t Crunk’). For now, it is at best a quickly-forgotten addition to the collections of fans passionate about the individual groups, and easily ignorable by the rest of us.

Jun

6

Tom Holliston is a self-taught independent rock musician and songwriter from Vancouver, B.C., who has released solo works under various names,as well as being an essential member of the Canadian punk bands NOMEANSNO and the HANSON BROTHERS. His solo work (under his own name and his band SHOW BUSINESS GIANTS) are generally humorous alternative rock songs, characterized by considerable musical variance with playful and obscure pop-culture themes. His playful sense of humor has worked constantly to shroud himself in willful obscurity, as he has diligently created press materials filled with misinformation, parody, satire and in-jokes specifically designed to give those ‘in the know’ a laugh.

Tom Holliston was born on April 21, 1960 in Victoria, Canada, into a musical family; his earliest musical memories were of Frank Crumit, John McCormack, and Pablo Casals. His older brother Robert pursued a career in classical music as an accompanist and chamber player, performing with Eugene Fodor, Richard Margison and others. Tom remained uninterested in music until a sports injury kept him away from school for a month, during which he became absorbed by the Beatles White album, leading his siblings to give him more of their music to study.

The Victoria scene was heavily inspired by the Ramones and the exuberance emergence of D.O.A. as a ‘local’ punk band, spawning countless young bands in a short period of time (including the influential NoMeansNo and Dayglo Abortions). Tom, self-taught on bass guitar, played in his first band - Pat Bay and the Malahats - in 1978, which Tom has described as ‘one of a thousand score bad punk bands’. There are mercifully no recordings known. As NoMeansno’s local and national popularity grew, Tom found himself being often mistaken for NMN guitarist Andy Kerr, who lived in the same Victoria neighborhood and looked vaguely similar; leading eventually to their meeting in 1984.

Tom became fascinated by home recording, and began work on a collection of songs that would eventually emerge in 1989 under the name of ‘Gold Love’, attributed to the Show Business Giants, nd a more developed follow-up with 1990’s The Benevolent Horn, both released on cassette only. At this time NoMeansNo decided to perform a Hallowe’en show in Vancouver as tribute to the Ramones, and asked Tom to join on guitar. ‘NoMeansNo Clones The Ramones’ was promoted with a poster of the first Ramones album cover, with happy faces pasted over those of the Ramones; the concert featured the first two Ramones albums played breathlessly in sequence. The concert received a delerious reception, planting the seeds of the Nomeansno’ side project The Hanson Brothers.

Andy Kerr and John Wright from NoMeansNo both joined Tom on the recording of 1991’s ‘I Thought It Was A Fig’ by the Show Business Giants, and both occasionally performed as part of the SBG ensemble. Concurrently NoMeansNo created a new act called ‘The Hanson Brothers’, combining the music of the Ramones with the imagery of the cult hockey movie ‘Slapshot’, appearing with D.O.A. and SNFU as part of a ‘Hockey Night at the Commodore’ concert series. Again enormously recieved, the Hanson Brothers, including ‘Tommy Hanson’ on guitar, recorded a debut album for Alternative Tentacles; and began touring hockey-mad Canada as the Hanson Brothers. Tommy’s Hanson’s bespectacled half-wit persona has become an integral part of the Hanson Brothers identity, as have his one-note guitar solos and incredible ability to drool at length.

Tom continued to record as the Show Business Giants, who now regularly included such local luminaries as guitarist/producer Scott Henderson, multi-instrumentalist Ford Pier, bassist Keith Rose, as well as NoMeansNo’s John Wright on drums. After releasing ‘Maybe It’s Just Me’ in 1993; Tom was asked by NoMeansNo to fill in the lead guitar position vacated by Andy Kerr, who had decided to retire from that band to marry and live in Europe. Tom was initially reluctant, given the enormous void created in the band by the loss of the eclectic and talented Kerr, but agreed to join the band, after receiving relentless guitar instruction from Rob Wright, first learning Kerr’s guitar parts by rote, then eventually developing into a solid contributing partner in the band.

In 1995 Virgin Records made a distribution deal with Vancouver independent label Essential Noise, which released albums by D.O.A., Hanson Brothers, and ‘Let’s Have A Talk With the Dead’ by Show BUsiness Giants. ‘Let’s Have A Talk’ was warmly received by Canadian college radio, with several tracks getting considerable rotation; however Virgin was unable to market the album (or any other Essential Noise release), outside of Canada, leading to the dissolution of the distribution agreement. However the interest generated by the album enabled the Show Business Giants to finally begin touring, leading to performances across Canada, into the United States, and some European dates. Three more Show Business Giants albums were released in the next 3 years, 1997’s Will There Be Corn, 2000’s Self-Aggrandizement Keeps Us Going, and the 2001 internet-only release ‘When Wrestling Meant Something’.

In 2002 Tom began releasing records under his own name, developing a rootsier, less punk approach. ‘Tom Holliston & His Opportunists’ was released in 2002, followed by 2003 ‘I Want You To Twist With Me’ and 2005’s excellent ‘Boy in Tub; Rabbit’. All were released independently by Holliston in North America, while being distributed overseas. by independent Smoeff records, leading to more tour dates in Europe. Future plans for Holliston include another solo album, another NOMeansNo album, and he has not ruled out the possibility of future Show Business Giants recordings; all of which is good news for his growing fan base.

Jun

6

One Vancouver retailer described Tom Holliston’s ‘Boy in Tub; Rabbit’ thusly - ‘put Captain Beefheart’s brain in Nick Lowe’s body, and then challenge that monster to write a Pointed Sticks album’ - nailed it! A gem of a CD, ‘Boy in Tub’ shows some terrific songwriting and musicianship, yet yields all of the expected Holliston quirkiness. ‘Smart Money’ is the hardest rocker, which has Holliston doing a hilarious Jello Biafra - ‘Ask anybody if they’ve heard me sing they’ll all say I sound like the lizard king’; while ‘Ladies Man’ is a terrific and catchy pop song. Add an homage to baseballer Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee and the topical ‘Celebrities on the Internet’ and you have a record that would easily chart on college radio, given half a chance. ‘If 9/26 is Your Birthday’ clearly channels Captain Van Vliet himself, while ‘Entomologist Pondering’ is a dreamy minor masterpiece. ‘Boy in Tub; Rabbit’ is a mature and accomplished work that deserves to reach a wider audience.

Jun

6

On his first solo release, Tom Holliston abandons most of the zany pop cultural references and caroming stylistic changes that typified his earlier releases for a more straight-ahead, almost roots-rock approach. As usual, the CD boasts a top-notch collection of musicians from the local Vancouver/Victoria scene solidly supporting Tom’s skewered view of such themes family values, advertising that preys on sexual fears, trophy wives, and celebrity stalking. There are some stylistic diversions - most notably the rockabilly-boogie corker ‘The Strong and Absent Type’ and the almost a-capella doo-wop ‘Motormouth’ - the rest of the album fits firmly in the same camp as such quirky alt-rockers as They Might Be Giants or Ween, albeit with that special Holliston flavor. A well-played, entertaining and solid recording. Recommended.

Jun

6

Harder and heavier than other releases, sonically ‘Self-Aggrandizement’ elevates the Show Business Giants into the company of Wire, NoMeansNo, and the Ex, albeit with Holliston’s fractured viewpoint still fully on display, and occasional side trips into sonic silliness. Pop culture references still abound: the chorus for ‘My Brother’s Kid’s a Waste of Sperm!’ delightfully compares the awful child to The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, and the band obviously had fun writing ‘Generic Childrens Song a la Yngwe Malmsteen’. Unlike on some other releases, the humor on ‘Self-Aggrandizement’ isn’t alloed to overshadow Holliston’s highly-literate and articulate writing skills. In the song ‘Why Don’t You Fuck Off?’, for example, Holliston bemoans corporate co-option of art:’In every Chapters window, on every Wal-Mart’s rack
From obscurity to resurgence and into paperback
Posterity’s taken a shine to you and
there’s fuck-all you can do.
Your lovers are now impotent, your apostles can only moan
As they watch Michael Eisner pry the jewelry from your bones
Meanwhile some distant nephew, is busy setting sights
On a protracted battle over foreign rights’

The production and mastering, assisted by noted Vancouver producer Marc L’Esperance, is top-notch, making ‘Self-Aggrandizement’ easily the best-sounding CD in the Show Business Giants catalog. Any fan of NoMeansNo, Hanson Brothers, or hard-edged alternative rock will be happy to add this gem to their collection.

Jun

6

Show Business Giants is a quirky, humor-laden independent western Canadian rock band with a rotating lineup centered around guitarist,vocalist and main songwriter Tom Holliston. with most frequent collaborators Scott Henderson (Hissanol) and Ford Pier (D.O.A., Jr. Gone Wild). Contributions have also come from such other well-known western Canadian musicians as Craig Vishek (Pigment Vehicle), Keith Rose (Hard Rock Miners, Royal Grand Prix), Carolyn Mark, and brothers John and Rob Wright (Hanson Brothers, NoMeansNo).

Show Business Giants recordings typically display energetic top-notch musicianship, bursting with musical in-jokes and obscure pop culture references, covering a wide range of genres, from doo-wop and faux folk to heavy metal and punk. Press information, biographies and photos are always wildly inaccurate and humorous, reflecting Holliston’s songwriting bent towards the silly, surreal and trivial. While of a novelty nature, many of the songs have an intellectual depth and such quality playing as to have created a minor cult following around his recordings.

Holliston released the debut Show BUsiness Giants recordings ‘Gold Love’ in 1989 and ‘The Benevolent Horn’ in 1990 as cassette-only releases. His 1991 release ‘I Thought It Was A Fig’ included contributor Andy Kerr, then-guitarist for NoMeansNo, bringing his work to the attention of that band who subsequently released ‘Maybe It’s Just Me’ on their independent Wrong Records label. When Kerr left NoMeansNo in 1993, Holliston was recruited to join that band, which he has remained with since (Holliston also is ‘Tommy Hanson’ in the NoMeansNo side project ‘The Hanson Brothers’).

In 1995 Essential Noise Records, a short-lived Virgin Records subsidiary, released the album ‘Let’s Have A Talk With The Dead’, and worked Canadian radio promoting ‘I’ve Got A Crush on Wendy Mesley’, a humorous ballad about an iconic female CBC television newscaster. Subsequent releases were ‘Will There Be Corn’(1997) and ‘Self-Aggrandizement Keeps Us Going’ (2000), which were released independently in Canada and Europe. The band has sporadically toured, when members can coordinate their schedules, playing in Europe in 1997 and 2000, the USA 1989-2001, and semi-regularly in Canada.

In recent years Holliston has released several solo albums, while leaving the possibility open for future recordings by the Show Business Giants.

Jun

6

Not much different from a typical Show Business Giants CD, the Apologists include long-time SBG collaborators Scott Henderson and Ford Pier. Kicking off with ‘Talk Minus Action Equals A Good Dinner Party’ (the title a humorous swipe at local icon D.O.A.’s earnest ‘Talk-Action=0′ slogan), ‘I Want You To Twist With Me’ plunks, stomps, veers, hovers and rocks all over the musical map. Lyrically it is more straight-forward than most Holliston releases; ‘I Need A Demographic’ has Tom plaintively wondering who will buy his records, while ‘Fan Night’ could be Hanson Brothers outtake. There are, of course, obtuse and wacky references - ‘Fussin’ With The ‘Tussin’ is about getting high on a particular brand of cough syrup, and ‘Ernst Rohm vs The NFL’ puts the boss of the Nazi SA in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon. Diehard NoMeansNo fans should know an Uncredited Rob Wright can be heard in the intro to the bizarre guitar feedback instrumental ‘Pick Slide’. interesting but unessential.

Jun

6


‘Let’s Have A Talk With The Dead’ is the definitive Show Business Giants album, with 18 diverse songs chock-full of pop-cultural references, zany hooks, and masterful rock riffing. From the opening ‘The First Pygmy In Space’ to the finale ‘Wake Up & Roar Bachelor God’, Holliston and his band show an adept ability to mutate elements of funk, punk, metal, reggae, doo-wop, and boogie into a highly-listenable concoction. Topics include homages to minor television icons (Russell Johnson, aka ‘Doc’ on Gilligan’s Island; Wendy Mesley, a CBC newscaster; Mothra, winged nemesis to Godzilla, and Star Trek’s ‘Other Side of Mr. Sulu’), self-disparagement (’I've Got Gingivitis’, ‘I’m the Lickspittle of the Animal Kingdom’), and even a straight-forward cover of ‘Sugartown’. The absolute killer though is the hilarious musician in-joke parody ‘Sound Check’, with a brilliant Jello Biafra impersonation leading us through a ridiculous routine. The original pressing is out of print, but it has happily been reissued. An excellent introduction to the group, and a must-have for fans of wacky independent rock and NoMeansNo completists.

Apr

25

Bernard Szajner (ZAY-ner) is a Paris-based unique visual effects artist and musician, who has created ground-breaking works in multiple disciplines while consistently striving to create and explore new relationships between light and sound.

A self-described ‘dilettante in the true sense of the term’, Bernard Szajner was born in Grenoble, France, late in the second World War, and hidden in a cave by his anxious Polish parents. Always creative, he took up painting at the age of 11, then became fascinated by stories of Leonardo da Vinci and his grand spectacles combining music, actors, and mechanized effects. Szajner abandoned paint and brush to eagerly study the details of Etienne Gaspard Robertson and his Magic Lantern phantasmagories, Vaucanson and his mysterious automatons, Oskar Schlemmer of the Bauhaus school, and other great visual effects artists; and his career path was born.

He began working on light shows in the late 1960’s, and became fascinated by the potential of lasers. Steady work as a stage designer and technician with such groups as Gong, Magma, Bachdenkel, and many others led him to become acknowledged as one of the top light technicians in France by the 1970s. In the early 1970s Bernard joined up with inventor Patrice Warrener and electronic music innovator Tim Blake (who had just left Daevid Allen’s Gong), to work on an idea for a new kind of light show. Since 1972 Blake had been championing a concept called the Crystal Machine, which called for controlling lasers with synthesised music. As the Crystal Machine they staged some small laser shows at the Kinopanorama in Paris, and played two week-long engagements at a large Paris nightclub in 1976 and 1977. Despite poor publicity the shows consistently sold out, and created quite a buzz; but the enormous staging, financial and technical difficulties of these productions made them unfeasible.

Sjazner left the Crystal Machine, and continued to worksas a visual effects director, doing laser lighting for music acts ranging from The Who to Klaus Schultze and Jean Michel Jarre. Still losing money and tired of dealing with big personalities, Szajner decided to experiment with smaller shows, asking unknown artists to perform against the backdrop of his visuals. This too proved frustrating, as he could not find artists willing to compose music to go with his presentations; so, self-taught as ever, he borrowed a synthesizer and started teaching himself. He began teaching himself composition, in his words ‘randomly twisting knobs and pushing buttons until I liked what I heard’. He wrote a series of pieces based around Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction masterwork Dune, enlisting the help of some of his musician friends.

Initially released on a small independent French label, this debut recording released under the pseudonym Zed, is now considered an electronica tour-de-force. 1979’s ‘Visions of Dune’ is a synth-based album featured a Zuehl electronica ‘all-star’ set of musicians - Colin Swinburne (Bachdenkel), Clement Bailly (Magma, Gong), Hanny Rowe (Heldon), and vocalists Klaus Blasquiz (Magma) and Anannka Raghel. It was poorly received by critics in the electronic music community in France, but was publicly well received, selling 5,000 copies in the subsequent two years. Accidentally meeting an English music manager, who was impressed by the recording and took on representation of Szajner, Sjazner quickly recievedrecording contract with French major label Pathe Marconi. The re-released album was well received, highly acclaimed by the British press for its unique vision and style. Recently reissued by Spalax, with its layered synths, odd sequencers, distorted bass and Fripp-ish guitars, ‘Visions of Dune’ has been compared to works by Heldon, Richard Pinhas, Hawkwind and Tangerine Dream, and remains one of the great progressive albums in French music.

‘Visions of Dune’ caught the ear of Amnesty International, who approached Szajner and asked him to compose a short 30-second piece about the death penalty, still in effect in France, in his ‘hard’ and ‘tense’ style. The commission led to what many consider his masterwork, the influential concept album ‘Some Deaths Take Forever’. Following an imaginary prisoner into the horrors of Death Row, the album uses hypnotic rhythms, bizarre guitar, sweeping Eno-synths, white noise percussion, radio static and rock guitar riffs to chilling effect. ‘Some Deaths Take Forever’ brought considerable acclaim to Szajner, and was voted ‘Disc of the Week’ as well as named as one of Melody Maker’s Top 10 albums of the year. It has endured, being recently reissued on CD and being named by superstar DJ Carl Craig as his favorite electronic album of all time.

Sjazner then made a high-profile contribution to musical history when he designed the Laser Harp for the 1981 ‘Concerts in China’ tour by French electronica artist Jean Michel Jarre. It was a simple task to rig synthesizer notes to trigger lasers, and Szajner backwards-engineered the concept. The original design, a laser separated into 12 beams by a holographic line grating, creates a fan of light beams which appear to be plucked in order to produce sounds; really a binary trigger is created in breaking the beam, initializing programmed events using a microcontroller to transform the optical data to analogue. Detractors originally claimed the Laser Harp was a sham, as Jarre would visibly play different notes on the same beam; this was explained by foot switches which allow for changing between different scales. Jarre, wearing asbestos gloves, has continued to use the Laser Harp in his concerts, while considerable technological development (most specifically in the areas of wider range values and control data) has improved the device, although there remains criticism of its legitimacy as a musical instrument, the laser harp remains a unique synthesizer elaboration.

In 1981 Szajner teamed up with Karel Beer to form The (Hypothetical) Prophets, crafting a unique set of synth-pop recordings eventually released as a series of 12″ singles and one highly-collectible concept album, ‘Around the World With the (Hypothetical) Prophets’. Both Szajner and Beer used pseudonyms (Norman D. Landing and Joe Veil), and were always photographed with their faces covered. The sound was minimal coldwave synth with some electronic experimentation, with unique vocals alternating in French and English as well as male and female vocals. The ’single’ was PerSon to PerSon’, featuring a male and a female reading personal ads from varous publications, revealing a pathetic listing of sexual desires and ambitions, ending with ‘Looks are not important; its your soul I want.’ The group was short-lived, and the records are difficult to find; although the curious may be able to find two songs, ‘Wallenberg’ and ‘Person to Person’, on the out-of-print 2004 compilation ‘So Young, But So Cold: Underground French Music 1977-1983′.

Also in 1981 Sjazner released his sparsest LP ‘Superficial Music’, the title of which reflects the opposite of what it says. Compiled from the tapes of the ‘Visions of Dune’ sessions, albeit played in reverse at half-speed, it force Szajner to create just by mixing and adding effects. An intellectual effort (and not reissued at this writing) it is a delicate, sensitive experiment in musique concrete, using pitch-change feedback, electronic percussion, slow drones, and other such effects.

In 1983 Sjazner had been interested in adding real literary prose to his work, and was attracted to Magazine’s singer Howard DeVoto because of the tone of his voice and his twisted sense of poetry. Together they colloborated on the album ‘Brute Reason’, a dissonant pop-rock album much different from his previous works. With creative production and arrangements far beyond 1983 standards, ‘Brute Reason’ is a mixed bag of epic electronic rock, with impeccable guitar parts and sweeping synthesizers providing a thoroughly satisfying counterpoint to DeVoto’s typically obtuse lyricism.

French critics made an abrupt volte-face; in 1985 Bernard Szajner was named ‘Knight of the order of Arts’ bu the Minister of Culture of France, and in 1986 he received a ‘culture and Technologies’ prize from that same ministry.

Sjazner released a few more singles, then stopped recording music in 1986, as he purusued his career as a high-tech theatrical and event designer, multimedia composer and robotic artist. Some highlights include “Beispiel” created for the Electronic Arts Festival at Rennes; ‘Brute Reason’ a creation for the Lyrical Theater of London; ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ for the Printemps de Bourges; ‘Spirit of the Revolution’ created for the Bicentennial Mission; a landmark work in the field of robot art, building two interactive theatrical computer-controlled automata scenes (’œLa chouette et le robot’ (The Owl and the Robot) and ‘œPetit Nicolas’) in the 1986-1991 Zoo des Robots installation (in which Szajner was now credited as an animatronics designer); the 1994 eight-minute audio-visual show ‘Vaucanson’s dream’, a show combining real objects - a lathe, a loom, vaucanson machines - with virtual images, to encourage viewers to reflect on artificial beings. He is currently simultaneously creating attractions for amusement parks, designing museum exhibitions, and creating his ’sculptures of light’ - in 2007 he mounted his most recent installation ‘L’absurdite, moins une seconde!’ to considerable acclaim.

After 16 years away from music, Szajner has once again began to create recordings, having mixed and produced 4 albums worth of material in the last 5 years (”Shameless cliches”, “Shadow Boxing Thieves”, “Death And Other Small Illusions” and “Bizarre Pieces For Grand Piano And Invisible Pianist”). ‘Bizarre Pieces for Grand Piano and Invisible Pianist’ was composed entirely with digital pencil and piano samples, with Szajner individually modeling the intensity, velocity, duration, reverbation and other elements of each note. Szajner is now preparing to seek out representation and a record label to release these recordings.

Szajner’s definition of himself as - a dilletante, an admirer or lover of the arts - is perhaps true, given the range of his interests and ‘amateur’ approach to creation. Still, his clear contributions to electronic music and explorations of the relation of light and sound make it necessary to credit him as both artist and innovator as well.

BERNARD SZAJNER’S ARTIST STATEMENT

I create with light. I create rituals, where time becomes suspended. I create archetypes, where everyone has a chance to live in the sensations and emations of childhood again. I create spaces void of the world’s confusion.

To explore. Explore the impalpable and give it form, explore the invisible and lend it a second appearance. To create paths, trails, ways, paradoxes, spaces of fleeting perception, of improbable existence.

To truly ‘touch’ tonalities (the inner tones of black, the outspoken delicacy of white) to provoke the senses (push, scour, feel), to touch to cold acidity of metal, in the ultra-violet darkness, the infra-sonic deafness…

shapes are born, issuing from the light.. and sounds, intimately entwined..Visions materialized..

There are two vintage videos on Youtube:
The Hypothetical Prophets video features Szajner with the Hypothetical Prophets performing ‘PerSon to PerSon’.

Far more interesting is The Big Scare, an experimental Sjazner music video for 1984’s ‘The Big Scare’ which includes a cameo by character actor Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen, Amelie, City of Lost Children’)

To get a real sense of the breadth and range of Szajner’s explorations, please check out one of Bernard’s websites, which has pictures, text, and video of a few of his many creative installations:
http://bernard.szajner.net/

Let’s hope to see some of his new work released soon!


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