This is like listening to an out of body experience as described by a semi-catatonic Robert Ashley floating above the scene like a distant drone, recording and listening to everything thats happening, or not happening, beneath the clouds below.
This would later serve as the foundation for the composer’s seven-part televised opera 'Perfect Lives', and he mumbles at length the inner workings of two characters, a man and a woman, anonymous to us and probably also to each other. Words circling meaning like gliding albatross' at altitude but never arriving at a conclusion,which are always disappointing. What’s explored by these drawling monologues, seems to be everything that isn’t happening....an inversion that skulks and slithers among the shadows,remaining as elusive as a not-quite-remembered dream.The foundations, like life are built on emptiness but also its interesting just how riveting that emptiness can be.Emptiness can fill any hole.
Tracklist:
A1 The Park 21:32
B1 The Backyard 23:56
2 comments:
A kind of Giordano Bruno shot (whoever he was).
My first exposure to Ashley was Episode 4 (the Bar), labeled at the time as being from "Private Parts (Perfect Lives)". I listen to these works regularly and often.
Maybe the weirdest record I've ever heard. Mr Ashley's zombie-like mumbling exudes a creepiness on a level that must make the most extreme metal and industrial acts jealous.
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