A PROPOS DE OLD TIME RELIJUN

"In the ancient of days, we gathered up from the mud".

CONFRONTATIONAL DANCE MUSIC TAKES OVER THE WORLD !

The End of Oppression! Olympia, Washington. New Year's Day, 1995. A dark and smelly basement. Three young musicians gather to tackle the vast songbook of Arrington de Dionyso. They had heard his self-recorded cassettes. The songs were wild and lovely. Arrington (the rebellious son of Methodist ministers) played every instrument with the soul of an outsider artist who didn't know any better. The original trio was brought together for one show. You know just to see what would happen. They called themselves Old Time Relijun.

Arrington played a $20 guitar and a beat up bass clarinet. He sang with a mixture of piss and vinegar that exploded with naive charisma. Bryce Panic harassed the drums. Aaron Hartman beat on a two-string upright bass with a microphone taped to its bridge. They communicated with the clairvoyance of long-married ninjas. That first show, everything went red: strings broke, the bass was a solid mass of feedback, the PA was blown. They used Arrington's songs as a template to meld shock-ritual with a mad-tea-party-dance-vibe. They barely noticed the college kids in full Riot Grrrl gear screaming, they had no idea that punkers and hippies were dancing together. Something awful happened that night. A band was born.

Soon they were playing full sets to friends and taste-making Olympia hipsters alike. They played every show they could whether or not they were on the bill. They developed the kind of intuitive free-jazz rapport most bands could only dream of. In 1996, OTR recorded their first album, "Songbook Volume One". They released it themselves, financing the production by tricking a friend out of his meager inheritance. The CD was packaged in stolen popcorn bags. In 1997, Calvin Johnson invited the band to record a song for the "Selector Dub Narcotic" compilation for his K Records label. From there, a beautiful relationship was born. After Bryce left to pursue a life of dance and yoga in India, one of the band's younger fans, Phil Elvrum, asked if he could join. He moved to Olympia, and OTR's second of many lives began. Phil's caveman beats and undeniable production savvy helped launch the first three Relijun albums K would release. "Uterus and Fire" (1999), was a bombastic exercise in recording in the red. "La Sirena de Pecera" (2000) was a one-night multilingual wonder, acting as a coda to "Uterus'"unyielding momentum. Then came the band's first true masterwork, "Witchcraft Rebellion" (2001), an album as deep and bizarre as anything you'll find on your record shelf.

A retelling of the first chapters of Genesis from the serpent's point of view. After a couple U.S. and European tours, Phil decided to focus his energy on his recording projects and his own band, the Microphones. Old Time Relijun continued in a variety of mutated formations, with various lost souls sitting behind the drum set. "As above, so below" The group experienced a brief lull in activity as Arrington began a period of vagabonding that would take him hitch-hiking across the United States and back and forth between Italy, France, and Argentina. A compilation of unreleased oddities, "Varieties of Religious Experience", was released in 2003, and both Arrington and Aaron had time to reevaluate the direction their band would take. During his travels, Arrington composed an outline for what would become "The Lost Light Trilogy".

The first two installments, Lost Light (2003) and 2012 (2005), recorded with the help of drummers Rives Elliot and Jamie Peterson, respectively, saw extensive touring, a wider audience for the band, as well as high praise from critics world wide. Arrington likes to say, "Every song on each album has a correspondence to other songs, whether musically or lyrically; with exponentially as a spatial archetype. Each song is like a small shard of a larger mirror - so that each piece reflects another piece, much in the way a cubist painting reflects many perspectives of the same object at once.

" The trilogy moves like an odyssey which blurs the lines between dream and life - placing the entire Universe within the expansive structure of three Old Time Relijun albums. Now based in Portland, Oregon, Old Time Relijun have re-invented themselves again. The final installment of the trilogy, Catharsis in Crisis, is the culmination of twelve years of deceptively untutored refinement. With new members Germaine Baca (drums) and Benjamin Hartman (saxophones), Old Time Relijun keeps charting new territories in the nether regions between the Ancient World and the Invisible New. These songs are at once autobiography, dream diary, and new myth - politically and sexually charged manifestos for alchemical revolution from a fully realized band, whose conceptual roots dig down as deep as their music.

Old Time Relijun songs embrace life in all its joy and terror- birth, death, awareness, experience, love. Live or recorded, they don't shy away from confronting the monsters that lurk deep in the shadows. At the same time, we hear a band that takes sheer vibrant delight in playing and being alive.

A PROPOS DE UZ JSME DOMA

Uz Jsme Doma, (pronounced oosh-smeh-dough-ma), are a progressive rock band from Czech Republic, who originally formed in northwest border town Teplice in 1985. The band's name translates literally to, "we're home now" but, as an idiom, means something more like, "well, there we go" in Czech conversation. The band has, to date, released six proper studio albums, two live albums, a best-of package and a DVD containing live footage and a documentary about the history of the band, which discusses its artistic significance and chronicals its dozens of lineup changes in its 22+ year career.

In addition to traditional band functions such as recording albums and touring, UJD have taken on a wide array of ambitious projects, including work with theater, fiilm and art. They collaborated very closely to the world famous band The Residents on their Freak show and felt in friendship with them and many other great musicians all over the world (Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Jello Biafra, David Thomas etc) Band tours frequently whole the world, from first foreign show in Germany till now they visited almost 30 different countries, major part of them took USA (more than 600 shows in almost all states) The band's approach to arrangements is unique in the world of rock. They bring the instruments and vocals in different directions within the same scales and keys to create a dense melodic atmosphere.

In addition, their rhythms often accent off-beats and half-beats, throwing the listener in unexpected directions. The music seems to be an exhausting juxtaposition between beauty and ugliness, as songs will frequently shift between modes to create tumultuous, powerful hooks (a good example of this is the song "Hollywood.") The band is also fond of shifts between time signatures and the insertion of extra beats in the shaping of the mood of the song. Wanek's lyrics have earned him a reputation as a respected Czech poet.

His lyrics have been described his writing as "an axe for the frozen sea inside us," a line taken from fellow countryman and influence Franz Kafka. All lyrics are translated to English and to Polish language, too. Artist Martin Velisek, the non-playing UJD member, has been published in several volumes and enjoyed popularity outside of his work with UJD as well.

His unique, absurd cartoon style, replete with alarming flourishes of realism, gruesomeness and beauty, gives UJD records their distinct look.

Miroslav Wanek (guitar, keyboards, lead vocal).
Pepa Cervinka (bass, vocal).
Adam Tomasek (trumpet, vocal).
Tomas Paleta (drums, clapping, tears).
Martin Velisek (brushes)

A PROPOS DE STANLEY KUBI

Lorsqu'un OVNI atterrit dans votre boite aux lettres, on ne sait pas comment le prendre. Alors on y va délicatement, par étapes. D'abord la pochette, plutôt réussie il faut bien l'avouer, un très drôle détournement de l'affiche du film Barry Lyndon. Ensuite mettre le disque dans une chaîne Hi-fi (oué je sais, c'est ringard. Elle lit même pas les mp3) Le cocktail est pour le moins surprenant, jugez plutôt :

1 mesure de fanfare

1 mesure de rock

2 mesures de punk

1 trait de musique du monde (comment vous appelez ça vous, des types qui utilisent l'épinette des Vosges, c'est pas ethnique ça ?).

Mélangez dans un shaker et servez dans un blender sur un lit de musique de film et, pour relever l'ensemble, un trait de folie. Servir frais et en groupe.

Forcément, avec un nom pareil, le groupe s'est spécialisé dans la reproduction éthylique des musiques de films de qui vous aurez reconnu. Là c'est au tour de "Barry Lyndon" donc. Il me reste un souvenir vaporeux de la BO de l'époque, un morceau des Chieftains, elle y est en version disco-épinette

Sous l'aspect potache de la pochette et du projet, se cache un groupe de gens qui savent jouer, orchestrer et (très important en ces jours politiquement corrects) foutre le bordel, avec un petit soupçon de subversion.

En tout cas les Stanley Kubi on plus d'un mérite, ils bénéficient d'une auto production de qualité, de s'adonner à un exercice de style très original, d'être de groupe de chez nous (ou à peu prés) et de ne pas reculer à la vue d'un petit canon.

D'après ce que l'on peut lire ici et là, sur le groupe, il semblerait que le vrai choc se fasse sur scène, donc allez sur leur site internet, voir si par hasard ils passent près de chez vous. M'est avis que ça vaut le détour. Une chose troublante est à noter, ces jours ci on peut voir, dans certains cinémas, "Barry Lyndon" à l'affiche. De deux choses l'une, soit les Stanley Kubi sont des visionnaires, soit il s'agit d'un plan à l'échelle internationale orchestré en haut lieu. A vous de juger.