As this blog was initially about how to turn musical Lead into musical Gold,or vice-versa, the 'electro-alchemy' of another very serious Hungarian seems out of place, when you compare it to anything on 'Fuck Off Records',but they do share the same determination to get their very unpopular works into the hearing appendages of a few hundred members of the public.Apart from that I've ran out of UK DIY stuff,so i gott write about something,no matter how tenuous the link.
This,one has to say, 'Fantastic' record melts haunting neo classical choirs with Kluster style narration in a foreign language....unless you're Hungarian of course.....and ......here's the electro bit....minimal electronic noise.
This would have made a great soundtrack for "Solaris 2" if anyone had the guts, or stupidity to try making such a bold attempt at the only good movie with a "2" at the end of the title.
Failing that, get a bunch of contemporary dancers and leave them to it.The results should be hilarious.
Tracklist:
1 Antifonák(1977) 9:30
2 Hivó Jelek(1977) 10:05
3 Ballade(1976) 5:00
4 Ludus Syntheticus(1977) 8:00
5 Kínai Templom Visszhanggal(1979) 8:12
6 Hommage À L'Électronique(1978) 9:24
John Coltrane's "Om", or anti-Om, as made on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum,by some cat called Zoltan!?....so that's either Zoltan, Cat of Dracula, or John Zoltrane?
Zoltrane, uses a french...yes French!!!?...synth called a 'Rsf Kobol',which if made to French manufacturing standards in 1986 would break down or fall apart as soon as you glanced in its general direction. I've never seen another artist use one of these who wasn't French....they like to buy French product do the French, no matter how crap it is. Then we have it hooked up to a computer designed by the idiot who produced the Sinclar C5 electric "I'm A Twat" sign on wheels.
I'm surprised the ZX Spectrum could handle the minimal repetetive sequence that plays continuously for fifty minutes.It must have used at least one whole kilobyte of the massive 128 Kilobyte memory that comfortably enabled kids to play Donkey Kong for hundreds of brain numbing hours.It obviously numbed the Brain of 'Sir' Clive Sinclair.....yes, this dick was knighted!?.....as he ruined his company with that ridculous plastic death chariot that he thought would revolutionise road transport.
The Commodore C64 was usually the home computer to go for concerning Electronic Mooozik production.Why' I've even used it myself,as my first sampler,and it had a built in synth called the 'SID Chip', which made unique lo-fi squelchy synth sounds. The ZX had nothing like that, so I'm at a loss as to why Zoltrane opted for this lo-tech device. Probably an importing beyond the Iron Cutain problem.Hungary only got Stockhausen LP's and ZX Spectrum's smuggled into it's musicians grasps.
They are likely all absolute whizzes at 'Donkey Kong' I wager.
Then came the Atari ST, with MIDI!?...just in time for the Acid House debacle.
Thanks to the Chernobyl disater,1986 was a good year for high background radiation levels,which made all Geiger Counters sing like a Nightingale on Crystal Meth. So ,maybe, that noise was Zoltrane's inspiration for this nursery rhyme from the reactor core of communist computer music.
I guess this could be referred to as a sequenced hypnotic drone,which it is,but I won't repeat it again; and it's certainly an easy way to fill up two sides of a vinyl LP.Kinda like an Avant-Garde Rock'n'Roll swindle,but,it being from a communist country,no money will have exchanged hands in the process.What is missing, is a robot chanting "Oooooommmmmmmmmmmmmm".....now that would have said something worthwhile?At least about the human tendancy to follow hive minded religions robotically.
Tracklist:
A-Om 1 (26:20)
B-Om 2 (26:12)
Oh Those Hungarians and their weird Iron curtain ways,and their kerazzzzy christian names like.....er.....Peter!!!?.....two Peters in fact.Theres a Peter Winkler on here,surely no relation to Fonz legend Henry I trust? Anything's possible in the world of avant garde Electronic music,even a 'Happy Days' connection.Despite the music summoning enough power through discomfort to rename this shit TV series as "Unhappy Days"
I'm relieved to say that the other names are far more in the malevolent dictator realm,like Ivan, and the previously discussed Zoltan......wasn't that the hound of Dracula's name?
The...er.....'music', is suitably castle dungeon in it's homeliness.
The odd appearance of The Soup Dragon from the Clangers,in Zoltan's work,place the evil one head and shoulders above his compatriots,although its all jolly sinister.Evoking empty space,lonliness and fear amongst the moist cloisters of a vampire's mountain top chateau.A Hungarian 'Trump Tower',but with taste.
Tracklist:
A1 –Zoltán Pongrácz - Mariphonia(1972) 8:07
A2 –Zoltán Pongrácz - Egy Cisz-Dur Akkord Története (1975) 5:48
A3 –Peter Eötvös - Mese: Rövidített Változat (1968) 12:18
B1 –Iván Patachich - Magánhangzók: Ta Fonaenta (1976) 8:06
B2 –Iván Patachich - Hangzó Függvények (1975) 10:37
B3 –Máté Victor & Péter Winkler - Viscositas (1975) 5:12
Most Hungarians have names that are later used for the character of an Evil God in cheapo kids fantasy cartoon series'. Zoltan , the bringer of pestilence,with a few of those weird Hungarian Dogs straining on the end of some chain heavy leash. One day Zoltan hopes to compete at 'Crufts',but for now he'll make do with just doing evil.Keep it simple Zolt.
This Zoltan makes evil sounding neo-classical electronics,complete with the barking hounds of Zoltan. Not the type of Electronics anyone can do mind....there's some craft to Mr. Pongrácz's electronic compositions. Sound effects as music, this most certainly is not! There's dark and light shading, and lots of stagey Hungarian monologues,in the style of those early Kluster albums (get them here and here). Again, I dunno what the voice is going on about,and I don't wanna know, it invariably lessens the mystery. I avoided seeing pictures of Joy Division, and I avoid translations of dark foreign language solioquies, to maintain the enigma.Nothing beats the perfection of the human imagination.
There's choirs too, like some Magyar version of the Omen.
Chimps could not make this,not even the infinate chimp,unlike the chumps who make that random knob twisting "I've got an expensive synth and you haven't" electronica' waving their Karl Heinz Stockhausen correspondence course certificate in your face mockingly,chanting "you don't understaaaand, you don't understaaand, nah nah n-nah naaaah!"
Tracklist:
A1 Madrigál 10:03
A2 144 Hang 12:00
B1 A Balgaság Dícsérete 18:26
B2 Sesquiatera 7:22
Any cover with close ups of an EMS synth is always iminently purchasable,and doubly so if it comes from behind the Iron Curtain during the cold war times.
For some reason communist Hungarians had a Stockhausen fixation, and enthusiastically made silly electronic noises and drew charts with the same efficiency as they helped Eichmann deport a million jewish citizens to the Auschwitz labour camp (notice how i called it 'a labour camp' to avoid know all anti-zion conspiracists telling me how many really died and how.....yeah we got holocaust fatigue as well as conspiracy fatique.....look I Don't Care understand!?...and yeah yeah yeah, I'm a Fascist,which is different to a Nazi by the way...well done you keyboard finger pointers....well done).
I figure that the only western records they could smuggle through customs were by Stockhausen,which would explain the number of serious electronic composers in Magyar land.....But that does not explain their numerous ,badly dressed prog bands, like the dreadful 'Omega',which i did feature on the blog, but ,true communists that they were/are, they made a DCMA complaint against me and the download had to be withdrawn(but you can check it here in the post on the terrible hungaro-rock album "Bum".
Its funny how former commies now make for the very worst capitalists.Humans do have a natural tendancy to burn down their houses to keep themselves warm,capitaist or communist.That's why, neither dogma works.
These electronic pieces are from the 'I've got a Synth and I'm gonna Use It school of 'Because I Can'.
A series of very pointless sound effects rechristened as music. Its great background music to a slow moving science fiction epic, or a wacky off-kilter fondue evening, but taking it seriously as a modern composition is strictly for the pseudo-intellectual in your cell.
Maybe this was an easy way to get a more favourable appartment in the brutalist tower block that László was allocated before he became an 'Artist', I dunno.Basically, he had access to an astronomically expensive EMS synth and his fellow brothers and sisters did not.....that's equality for you.
Good cover though.
Tracklist:
A1 "A²" (16:38)
A2 Oscillations No. 3 (9:45)
B1 Oscillations No. 1 (18:00)
B2 Oscillations No. 2 (11:50)
