Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Gemini, the Temple twins
The sun is in this sign from 22nd May to 22nd June. An air sign.
Key words: letters, books, stories, reports, radio, telephone, roads, railways, twins, dexterity, handicrafts.
Light or planet: Mercury.
Body parts: lungs, arms.
According to legend, Castor was mortal while Pollux was immortal. When Castor died, Pollux did not want to live with the gods alone, so both brothers now travel alternately between Olympus and Hades, between the Holy Mountain and the Otherworld.
Named stars in the Gemini constellation are Althena, Castor A, Castor B, Mebsuta, Pollux, Mekbuda, Wasat, Tejat Posterior and Tejat Prior. The brightest star is not Alpha Geminorum, but Beta Geminorum, also known as Pollux. It is a 1.2 Magnitude orange giant of spectral class KO and is 34 light years away from earth. Alpha Geminorum also known as Castor is fainter at 1.6 Magnitude and is 52 light years away. Castor is a multiple star. Gemini is a complex sextuple system: the visible stars A, B and C are spectroscopic binaries, betrayed by double lines in their spectra. Within a 0.5 circle of the 5.5 Magnitude open star cluster M35 – NGC 2168 it is possible to see some 200 stars, the brightest being 8.0 Magnitude. The cluster is about 2800 light years away. NGC 2392 is known as the Eskimo Nebula or Clown Face. It is a 8.9 Magnitude bright planetary nebula and its distance is estimated at 14000 to 3600 light years away.
In the Bodmin Moor Terrestrial Zodiac, the sign of Gemini lies over the area known as Temple and Cardinham Moor. Parts of the sign are marked on the Ordnance Survey map as a Danger Area. We were at first wary of exploring this area, was it a fenced off military zone that we would be unable to explore? Would we have to walk the perimeter of the Danger Area? The image of the twins is a triumph of imaginative omission, for it is the minds eye that completes the design. The landscape lines that define them curve and melt into the greens and browns of fields, quarries and clay tips. The outline is close to something half-glimpsed or apprehended in the dark of a dream. Do the twins share one body, but two heads? Are they Siamese twins?
In our enhanced visualisation the twins wear red and blue loin-cloths respectively. Both brothers are seated. The twin in the blue has an outstretched hand in which he hold a gold coloured bow and arrow. One leans slightly on his brother and carries a golden harp with four strings. This twin’s head partly obscures the first twin’s head from view. One of his arms embraces his brother and we see his fingers on the other twin’s bare waist. In his other hand he carries a wooden club, the club extends the length of the twin’s hip to shoulder, it is approximately the same shape and covers part of the Danger Area on the Ordnance Survey map though it is smaller and is set at a slightly different angle. The constellation of Gemini is roughly rectangular in shape, however the rectangle is slightly twisted being formed by the conjunction of eight stars. The twins are seated on a red line which runs diagonally beneath them. The red line represents both the Milky Way and the A30. The bow and arrows lie over the hamlet of Temple, the club lies over the Danger Area, its tip is marked by Great Care Hill. The twins’ feet lie on Trehudreh Downs and their heads lie on Hardhead Downs.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Friday, 29 April 2011
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Sunday, 24 April 2011
TRAX XTRA - FREE REPRINT!
What did you find in your Easter Egg? If the surprise disappointed you, don't be upset, we offer you the free reprint curated by Radical Matters - Editions / Label of the historical album TRAX 0982 XTRA, ideated in 1982 by TRAX Unit 01 Piermario Ciani and composed at distance in a network of crossed exchanges by ten international musicians. As a bonus, you will find also a new experiment in "telecomposed" music, TRAX NEWXTRA 2011, coordinated by Gianluca Becuzzi with contributions from Nigel Ayers, Simon Balestrazzi, Fabio Orsi, Pietro Riparbelli and Rod Summers with Marie-Claire Krell.
Get it as a FREE DOWNLOAD, inclusive of cover images and bonus contents, here:
http://www.radicalmatters.com/asp/web_editions.asp
Or buy it as a COLLECTABLE LIMITED EDITION CD in special 7” sleeve with inserts (Euro 15,00) here:
http://www.radicalmatters.com/asp/cd_cdr_catalogue.asp
Read below in this message the new introductory text and the list of tracks.
HAPPY EASTER!
Vittore Baroni & Radical Matters
TRAX 0982 XTRA
One year after the reprint as a free download and limited edition cd of the Trax 0983 Anthems project, Radical Matters reproposes with the same formula the first vinyl album produced by the atypical group/label TRAX in the distant year 1982. Following up a series of audiocassettes assembled with similar methodologies (Technodeath, Horrorbox, The Cop Killers, etc.), this pioneering album conceived and coordinated by Piermario Ciani synthesized brilliantly the idea of a “telematic” (and “modular”) music, composed and played through collaborations at distance, a concept explored before the age of Internet both by activists of the heterogeneous international “tape network” and by exponents of the “serious” electronic music scene, for example Pietro Grossi. As usual in this series of reprints started in 2007 with the double cd Rednight, Gianluca Becuzzi took care of the remastering from the original vinyl and added a new experiment in composition at distance (NewXtra). Nigel Ayers is the only participant of Xtra that has been involved again, creating thirty years later an ideal bridge between the two projects. For the occasion, I immersed myself once again in the archive of memories, digging up some images and documents of the period (the Grand Trax 0184 box, in particular, contained some graphics originally created for a deluxe edition of the Xtra lp, never completed), added here as an extra bonus and testimony of the multimedial disposition of the whirl of products and events that TRAX got under way between 1981 and 1987.
Whatever happened to the original TRAX Units? Some friends (to whom this reprint is dedicated) have sadly come to an untimely end, others are still active in areas connected to the artistical and musical scene, even with high-profile results (like Massimo Giacon in the fields of design, comics and contemporary art, or Martin Hall, who has become in Denmark a cult writer and composer), yet others are today professors of high repute or hold public offices in the cultural sector (Martina, Ciullini). If you appreciated the unique mixture of bizarre new wave, darting elettropop, ferocious industrial-noise and minimalist ambient of Xtra, let us know, we will feel more motivated to retrieve a few other rare relics. Once more, my warmest thanks go to all the authors involved and to Gianluca Becuzzi and Sandro Gronchi, without whose genuine enthusiasm this work would have never seen the light of day.
Vittore Baroni, January 2011 - vittorebaroni@alice.it
This record has not been produced, as usually, by one or more bands going into a recording studio with some compositions ready to be performed and later transferred onto vinyl.
This record is the final result of a process that did not take into account the musical, stylistic or compositive necessities of the various participants.
The Central Unit 01 contacted a selected number of individuals acting as Peripheral Units in a project of crossed interferences.
Some Peripheral Units prepared a base-track on tape that was forwarded by 01 to other Units for further elaboration.
The graphic scheme on the cover represents the development of the subsequent crossings: e.g. the track Gamma Thetan, that opens the TRAX side of the record, is the mix that results from a sound base produced by Unit 04, forwarded to Unit 08 who elaborated it and then forwarded it to 02, who after working on it returned the tape to 01, functioning as the data processing centre.
The project Trax 0982 Xtra proposes a workable model but does not exhaust its possibilities.
The series of ten modular compositions on this LP is just one among many possible combinations.
Trax 0982 Xtra presents audio pieces without a composer performed by inexistent ensembles that met only through a network of reproduction technologies and communication media.
(original cover notes)
The conceptual and operative scheme that I devised for Trax NewXtra, the new project of “modular composition” with the participation of six Units, four Italians and two from other countries, is a little different from the original one. Instead of adopting the scheme of crossed collaborations employed in 1982, I opted for a radial system. Acting as Central Unit, I provided the five Peripheral Units invited to the project (Ayers, Balestrazzi, Orsi, Riparbelli, Summers) with the same audio input, a series of dronic bases. I asked to each Unit to record a different track for each base I provided, not overmixed but as a separate track. In this way, once all the contributions had been collected, I was able to freely recombine all the different pieces of the audio puzzle into a single suite, titled Where Angels Can't Land. Of particular interest is the fact that, with this scheme, we gave form to a sort of “deaf orchestra” in which all the musicians played together without hearing each other. Only the coordinator/director of the orchestra or Central Unit (me) has been able to hear and (partially) control the global sound of the ensemble. In this sense, the radial structure of NewXtra works exactly in the opposite way compared to the old Xtra, where each Unit answered to the audio input provided by the preceding Unit in a chain of vertical stratifications. If you wish, NewXtra also represents a sort of semi-controlled application of the aleatory theories of John Cage.
Gianluca Becuzzi, January 2011
TRAX 0982 XTRA
TRAX side:
1 - Gamma Thetan (01<02<08<04)
2 - Strange Quack Quack (01<03<10)
3 - Di lui non si sa più nulla (01<03<07)
4 - Nastro rosso (01<03<06)
5 - Fishes (01<09<08)
XTRA side:
6 - Combination (01<04<03)
7 - Ancora icone (01<09<08)
8 - Fanfare for the Meat Generation (01<07<04)
9 - Live Blister Bump (01<02<07<09)
10 - I Love Cancer (01<10<06<04)
Central Unit:
01 - Piermario Ciani: concept, organization & mix.
Peripheral Units:
02 - Vittore Baroni: text, voice, guitar, post office.
03 - Massimo Giacon: text, voice, noises, casiotone. With Spirocheta Pergoli: Fabio Beltrame (sax, bass), Enrico Friso (keyboards), Alberto Mineo (bass, guitar, guitar synth).
04 - Giancarlo Martina: guitar. With B.Sides: Bruce (vocals), Gian (drums), Spyke (keyboards), Momi (drums, base only).
05 - Martin Hall: tapes, noises (base only).
06 - Enrico Piva: tapes, keyboards, personal IBM.
07 - Nocturnal Emissions: Nigel Ayers (tapes, voice, violin), Caroline K (synth, voice).
08 - Daniele Ciullini: synth.
09 - De Rezke: Angelo Pretolani (text, voice, rhythmbox, casiotone), Roberto Rossini (synth, voice, casiotone), Marco Canepa (synth, sequencer).
10 - Ado Scaini: rhythmbox, synth (base only). With Ale (keyboards, base only), Plexy (synth, sequencer, base only), W. Gibson (bass, guitar), Radar (drums), Silence (bass), Blue Panther (maracas), Frankie Gasperoni (geometer).
Tracks 1-10 released by TRAX in September 1982 as a black vinyl LP in edtion of 1000 copies.
Original cover art: Piermario Ciani & Cristina.
Thanks to Studio Diamine, Rap & Momi, Atelier De Montage, 001... Cancer, Centro UH!
In affectionate memory of Piermario, Caroline K and Enrico Piva.
(bonus) TRAX NEWXTRA 2011
11 - Gianluca Becuzzi / VV.AA. - Where Angels Can't Land (25’ 18”)
Central Unit:
Gianluca Becuzzi: electroacoustic drones, sound objects, programming.
Peripheral Units:
Nigel Ayers - Nocturnal Emissions: handcrafted digital audio, Made in Cornwall.
Simon Balestrazzi: prepared ukelin and tsymbaly, bird calls, analogue synths.
Fabio Orsi: processed electric guitar.
Pietro Riparbelli: transcoded short wave radio.
Rod Summers/VEC Audio: vocals, vocal treatments, with Marie-Claire Krell (vocals).
Track 11 assembled and produced by Gianluca Becuzzi at Kinetixlab (2011).
TRAX 0982 XTRA - Reprint remastered for Radical Matters / Editions / Label by Gianluca Becuzzi in January 2011 at Kinetixlab (Italy).
All (c) remain to the authors. Edition designed and manufactured by RM-ED/L | SG
License: C.C. by-nc-nd 2011 | Radical Matters - Editions / Label
(from Vittore Baroni)
