Manafonistas

Man sollte doch vorsichtig sein, wenn man diverse Formen existenziellen Elends „gegenrechnet“. Als könnte man die steigenden Suizidraten und die steigende Zahl von Depressionen als Argument für kontrollierte Öffnungen verwenden! Die sich als zunehmend unkontrollierbar entpuppen. Recherchen in NRW haben ergeben, dass die Schulen miserabel vorbereitet sind, was die Praxis von Schnelltests, angemessenen Räumlichkeiten, Sicherung von Sicherheitsabständen, etc. angeht. Geht man davon aus, dass die B.1.1.7-Zahlen weiterhin so steigen, ist laut RKI in der Woche ab dem 5. April »mit Fallzahlen über dem Niveau von Weihnachten« zu rechnen. Konkret schätzt das RKI für die Woche ab dem 12. April eine Sieben-Tage-Inzidenz im Bereich zwischen 220 und mehr als 500. Die mittlere Schätzung liegt bei 350 pro 100.000 Menschen. Das entspricht gut 41.000 gemeldeten Coronafällen pro Tag. Kürzliche Öffnungen und Lockerungen sind bei diesem Blick in die Zukunft nicht eingepreist, wie Der Spiegel es deutlich sagt. Und man halte sich ganz sachte vor Augen, was durch die Öffnungen der Schulen zwei Wochen vor den Osterferien in Gang gesetzt wird (s.o.). Es gehört zum Drama dieser Pandemie in Deutschland, dass jetzt langsam fast alles schiefläuft, was schieflaufen kann. Das Murphy-Prinzip. Und statt zu lernen von den USA (unter Biden), von Israel, sogar England, was die Impfpolitik betrifft, greift hier seit Wochen ein logistisches Wirrwarr um sich, das das Bild von Deutschen als Organisationsgenies ad absurdum führt. Zum Schwarzsehen hat keiner Grund, wenn er nach Australien oder Neuseeland (mit ihrer rigorosen Handhabung einer klugen, verdammt klugen Zero Covid-Politik) übersiedeln kann. Kann halt kaum einer. Es geht von Lockdown zu Lockdown, von einem Stotterrhythmus zum nächsten. Was die eingangs zitierten Depressionen und Erschöpfungszustände chronisch werden lässt. Bald sind auch die Ü-40-Menschen vermehrt auf Intensivstationen, wie vermutet wird, dramatische Verläufe gehen bei den Alten aus bekannten Gründen sachte zurück. Auf seine Weise ist das Virus in seiner tückischen Mutationsfähigkeit „intelligenter“ als all die supervernetzten Zeitgenossen und ihre Aufrufe zu massvollen Öffnungen. Als wäre die brasilianische Variante hier nicht bald anzutreffen! Und das im sog. Superwahljahr. Laschet gibt schon jetzt den Weihnachtsmann. Wie sagte er vor ein paar Wochen, grundgütig in die Kamera lächelnd wie einst Doc Welby auf Hausbesuch: „Es dauert noch ein paar Tage.“ Aber was regen wir uns auf. Schon Hans Magnus Enzenberger schrieb in einem Prosagedicht, dass die Toten ohnehin in der Mehrheit seien. Und  Leben, so schrieb Michel De Montaigne, heisst schliesslich sterben lernen. Aber bitte nicht die Art von Sterben, die von politischer und sozialer Wirrnis befeuert wird.

 

Über 73000  Corona-Tote. In Deutschland.  Es ist ethisch hochproblematisch, zu implizieren, die „Alten“ sterben sowieso : die sog. „Alten“  hätten noch  gut zehn Jahre oder mehr leben können. Durch die neuen Mutationen verändert sich das Bild wieder, weil auch „Jüngere“ die Intensivstationen füllen werden. Bekanntermassen ist die britische Mutation mittlerweile am weitesten verbreitet und ansteckender. 

 

AKTUELL: 14.3.2021. Im Kreis Düren liegt die Inzidenz über 100. Ein Antrag des Kreises Düren, die Schule geschlossen  zu halten, wurde von der NRW-Landesregierung abgelehnt. Wahnsinn. Dass Frau Gebauer eine komplett inkompetente Bildungsministerin ist, ist schon lange bekannt. In vielen betroffenen Familien regt sich massiver Widerstand.

 

In diesem Jahr wird das spoken word-album zehn Jahre alt, das Brian Eno und Rick Holland gemeinsam entwickelten. Es hat nichts von seiner Anziehungskraft verloren. Brian hatte stets ein Faible für spoken-word-music, ein frühes Beispiel kann man auf seinem ersten Songalbum „Here Come The Warm Jets“ finden. Er war vollends fasziniert von jenem Album von The Books (das mit dem grünen Cover), das ich ihm 2005 mitbrachte zu unserem Berliner Interview im Adlon anlässlich „Another Day On Earth“. Und auch bei dem im April erscheinenden spoken word-Album von Marianne Faithfull ist er mit zwei, drei Arrangements und einigen „treatments“ dabei.

Das Interview mit Rick Holland war ein Highlight meiner Interviews jenes Jahres, und es zeigt, dass solch vielfältige Poeme einen immerneuen Ansatz der musikalischen Darbietung einfordern. Genau das ist Eno gelungen, und deshalb ist DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS so schillernd geworden, Füllhorn, Klangrausch, „food for thought“, und, wie es ein Kritiker nannte, „electronic soul music for the mind“.

Damals habe ich mit Freunden alle englischen Gedichte ins Deutsche übertragen. Sie finden sich, unter „Ältere Beiträge“, in den Sommermonaten 2011. All meine Texte von jenem ersten Jahr der Manafonisten, die es m.E. wert sind, erhalten zu bleiben (ungefähr 10 Prozent, schätze ich), werden sich, anlässlich des zehnjährigen Bestehens dieses Blogs, also hier wiederfinden, anno 2021, im Laufe der Zeit. Der Rest wird vermüllt. Die Übersetzungen der Gedichte, oft direkt neben die Originale platziert, werden allerdings wie Ruinen in jenem Jahr verharren. Wenn uns nichts Besseres einfällt. Viel Freude bei der Entdeckung oder Wiederentdeckung eines ganz besonderen Albums.

 

 

 

 

 

THE APPEARANCE OF ELISHA MUDLEY

 

Michael Engelbrecht:   On a lot of his albums, Brian only rarely works with clearly defined lyrics when entering a studio. This time, he had your poems – and, as I imagine, letting their impact on him work, he was inspired to approach every track with new ideas, new sounds. You have only a rare apparition as one of the nine voices on the album; how have you been involved in the studio work? Did you offer him any musical ideas, from the point of view of a “real” non-musician?

 

Rick Holland: You are right that each track was approached as a unique organism, and there were nearly fifty pieces when we first sat down to finish the record. I do offer musical ideas and also extremely vague and over-reaching requests, Can you make this part sound more like primordial sludge Brian?’, that kind of thing. Of course his answers tend to be, ‘Yes, yes I can.’.

We worked together in his studio throughout the intensive final weeks and also at most of the sessions that spawned the initial ‘skeletons’ of the tracks over the years. I think we both took some steps away from our comfort zones over these sessions, which is what collaborating relies on, and there was certainly never a sense that he ‘did’ music and I ‘did’ words. Poems and Music were equally likely to change in the process of making, and the making process was an open forum of ideas.

‘The Real’ is perhaps the most recent example of a ‘school’ of song formation whereby  Brian would have several pieces on the go and I would provide or write words for the ones that most spoke to me. The first stage in these tracks was to superimpose a vocal over the existing music. Sometimes, a vocal just steers the piece towards its final shape and many musical ideas were provided by the vocalists, not directly, but in the nuances of their readings and more specifically their own ways of forming spoken words.

The components of this one just fell into place with a combination of reshaping an existing ‘poem’ I had been working on, and the beautiful chance arrival at the studio of Elisha Mudley, who really did appear like an angel that day, unannounced, and just in time for us to record. Not all days ran that smoothly!

 

Michael:   Your poems allow the listener to drift freely between the impressions the single words and pictures are offering. As a material that is not fixed to transport a certain message, and more open to free associations, one can experience the words in a very relaxed way. Can you explain this a bit, with a look at the opening track, this London poem “Bless This Space”. And what was the first idea that brought this poem on its way? The albums starts,  almost programmatic, with the words “Bless this space / in rhyme and sound”…”

 

NEAR OLD STREET IN LONDON

 

Rick: This is a very good question. The great interest for me in the whole of this process has been the giving up of control of meaning. Many poets would really not like this idea. By allowing the idiosyncrasies of accent and word formation in foreign English speakers the centre stage, and then enjoying and exploiting the accidents of meaning those sounds can create, the poetic process is often greatly enhanced, and often in surprising ways. I was already a poet who enjoyed leaving ‘image lines’ and indeed sounds to trigger a journey into personal meaning before I met Brian, but over the years of working with him, I have developed a clearer idea of the middle ground between pure audio material and carriers of meaning and how the two can play off each other.

The example you cite ‘Bless this Space’ is an interesting one, as it is not typical of how we worked. The poem was inspired by a production job of sorts I had for the Map making project in 2003 (the event I met Brian at actually). It was a very ambitious collaboration between artists of all kinds, from ballet dancers to painters to orchestras; I was unofficially tasked with pulling the show together with some kind of thread. It was set in St Luke’s, in what used to be a church near Old Street in London but is now the home of LSO and a beautiful music venue. I was asked to write something to accompany the dance piece that opened the show, and so I decided to play on the idea of the art venue being a place for people to come and ‘unfold’ the daily pretences of life. The rhythm and feel of it was ritualistic in keeping with the motions of the dance and for me it made a good opening ‘blessing’ for the performance to come, like a call to the audience for an open mind, or a mock invocation of the spirits.

I included it in a bundle of words I once printed out for Brian and forgot all about it, until one day I received an email from Brian with his reading over a pulse track. I liked it, but again we forgot it for a long time, and then it re-emerged in this form after Leo Abrahams and Seb Rochford had worked their magic; Leo’s guitar part and Seb’s drums knock it off kilter and add even more a sense of the intoxicating freedom after the ritual, as though you are marched to the precipice and have no choice but to jump into the unknown. Now it is a piece of music which as you say can be linked into lyrically, or just grooved to, or both. Hopefully, lines jump out differently for different people. And it keeps the half life of that original poem but adds a new life, or several new lives at once to it. For me, ‘step through mediums/outside of the race/to look in’ works on many levels for individuals and society. I love this track.

 

BRIAN´S FREAK-OUT SECTION

 

Michael:  On Glitch, as on many other poems,  you´re working with the freedoms of “Konkrete Poesie” (Gomringer, Arp, Jandl a.o.) by using the whole space, letting go traditional forms of arranging words. The graphic space between the words (white canvas) produces an airy climate for the words, sometimes even a kind of rhythmical pattern. Can you describe the story behind the writing of “Glitch”, and how Brian´s music did  surprise you?

 

Rick: Before meeting Brian I had set out on writing directly to music, and in ways that were inspired directly by music; in fact I had been experimenting with writing as a direct translation of  other forms of expression, of which music is for me the most direct and enjoyable. ‘Glitch’ was written a long time ago, but I think it was written only in relation to a very sparse drum pattern that I had asked a friend to make for me and without much editing for meaning. This perhaps explains the context you give it and why it worked so well in relation to the graphic space you mention. The space was perhaps already there, a la Konkrete Poesie  but it was certainly consciously manipulated in Brian’s transformation to music. Brian is forever asking readers to ‘go slow’ for precisely this reason. I don’t have much knowledge about “Konkrete Poesie” so I will investigate, thankyou.

So, ‘glitch’ started from the words, and Grazna Goworek (who looked after Brian’s studio some years ago) was invited to read. She didn’t even bat an eyelid when he asked her to go and sit in the toilet to read the poem, which is where the rasping atmosphere of the reading comes from, along with Brian’s processing of her voice. Then the music was built from these starting points, the words and the voice became a pulse and an atmosphere, so actually the music did not surprise me in this case.

However, we returned to ‘glitch’ several times over the years, and the greatest surprise came in the very last week of working on the record. In response to one of my more outlandish requests (something like ‘Could you make a section that sounds like the sub atomic code of the universe?’) Brian constructed the ‘freak out’ section that I think now takes the track to the next level. That part is the real language of the piece for me, condensed and magnified like a real poem should be. It speaks in greater volumes than all of the words!

 

BLAIR AND THE BIRDS

 

Michael:  One of the beautiful moments  in “Dreambirds” is when the words say “invent new colors”, and the music sounds like a perfect example for synasthesia, the transformation of colors into music. In the lyrics there are two interesting elements that produce a kind of tension: the dreamy skyscape with the birds, and then, the  political allusions…  a kind of “utopian poem”, so to speak?

 

Rick: Yes absolutely in the synaesthesia sense. We experimented with various ways of representing words with sound, and in this case I agree, the elements hang together like a visual trace across the sky. The politics are also there, and they are a strange mixture. Having worked as a teacher in various guises, in London and further afield in Central Africa and India, the untrammeled potential of youthful imagination is always inspiring to me. It is also violated by the ‘facts’ of life so often, when the young person’s perspective is very often the right one but is denied.

The financial crisis most recently points to this fact so I’ll use it as a slightly cumbersome example; while I was growing up in a country of people doing jobs that I couldn’t really understand I always sensed very strongly that our economic foundations were built on make believe, but I would dampen these impressions and assume there was someone who was far more intelligent than me in control. In the Blair years, the promises of equal opportunities for all youngsters to learn and aspire made me feel equally uneasy. We were ‘rich’ as a nation, but no-one really understood or even bothered to understand why this was, and we had a government rolling out initiatives that always sounded as flimsy as the new labour theme tune to me.

What was clear is that back in the real world we needed truly ‘brilliant’ young rather than political spin versions of brilliant young who weren’t really prepared for anything useful by this aspirational lie of an education. So ‘Dreambirds’ was a poem about the tussle between the true potential of imagination, and the mirage that was being sold that let everyone ‘express themselves’ and have the impression that they were on the ladder to somewhere better when perhaps they weren’t at all (a blank dioxide perhaps).

Thankfully, the beautiful musical accompaniment allows the imagination to roam and doesn’t focus instead on that satirical edge, and ultimately in  the poem and in the music, it is the imagination that wins! We do need brilliant young inventing new colours that fly, and they are out there working very hard at it, right now. When I listen to this one now, I imagine wonderfully odd semi-robotic species of bird full of character and colour. This piece makes me smile, as though we live in a very complex world that is still full of charm.

 

Michael: “Seepods” is a good example for your preference (sometimes) to use very sensual, miscroscopic details of everyday life and then build up a kind of impressionistic picture… does this poem in some way reflect your interest in a free, unconditioned way of perceiving things that can produce magic without being linked to a certain message?

 

Rick: ‘Yes’ is the best answer to this question. I can’t express this better than you have! I will add that I have a belief that the internal world and the external world can both be understood far better by just looking; looking carefully at them both in the context of the other. ‘Looking’ itself needs examining and re-evaluating too. Relationship (like that of the very large to the very small) is everywhere in this album, and in my work in general. I also recognise lately that so much of  what we experience as ‘feeling’ is just projected, and from the top of the 344 bus in London (where I wrote this one) it is possible to see ‘seven different feelings’ responding in their ‘seven’ different ways to the same trigger at any given moment. Only a conditioned mind fails to see this every day in London.

 

LIVING IN MUMBAI

 

Michael:  One of my favourite poems and tracks (in fact, they are nearly all favourite pieces)  is “the real”, a fine  example of producing mistrust  about so-called “reality”.  By repeating some of the words and changing them subtely, the listener´s security is more and more feeling like a fake. Could be a Buddhist poem for the Western world, couldn´t it? And Brian enhances this by heavily treating the voice in the last part of the long track…

 

Rick: This is one of my favourite tracks too. An undressing of the myths of language, and because of Brian’s wonderful idea of stretching and elongating the ‘repeat’, an undressing of the very myth of speaking (and telling ‘facts’) too, it is an opportunity to meditate on your own understandings.

Living in Mumbai for a while really opened my eyes to the fact that these ideas are not new or strange, and are also not ‘hippy’ (or any other similarly Western kind of identifying word to discredit anything ‘other’). In India I found a society that was able to talk about things not from a self conscious position of quasi-scientific authority but from an open position of questioning and critical thinking built into the fabric of daily life by an ancient tradition of such thinking. Exact ‘classification’ was not the stated end of this thinking, unlike the West, rather an acknowledgement that giant forces of the world and universe were in flux, and that human beings played only a small and equal part to all other forms of life.

I am not Buddhist, or a Hindu, nor have I studied either way exhaustively, but I do see the frontiers of science shifting all the time and making fools of experts, and the fact that people have also long agreed on one simple truth, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. At the ends of our formalized intelligence lives imagination. Ultimately, we are all looking for the same thing and anyone who tells you ‘no, you are wrong, life is rigidly this way, full stop’ is almost certainly selling you something.

 

WHAT TAGORE SAID TO EINSTEIN

 

Michael:  Who is “The Airman”… Where does this title hint to? A space traveler?  Quite often in your poems you´re writing  about stuff from a kind of “outsider perspective”. A kind of “alien perspective”… Another good example is the poem “A title” that offers some excursion to evolution theory…

 

Rick: The airman is a representation of my own attempts at thinking logically through smaller and smaller building blocks of life in an attempt to understand it. Like deep sea divers and space explorers, we are still searching our own consciousness and wondering where it can take us; often it is our ability to travel further away from ourselves that allows us to better understand ourselves. The actual idea of ‘airman’ I am almost certain was taken from Auden or the ‘pylon poets’ of the 1930s, and really is just about jumping on the back of technological advance to steal a clear view of its secrets like a magpie (Auden’s airman I think was a first world war pilot scanning the earth to make maps). “a title” is similar, as we get closer  to understanding ourselves through a meditation through a microscope, or appreciating our true nature beneath all the constructs.

 

Michael:  “Sounds alien” has, from the lyrics,  clear musical references, like  “sounds are alien and dense…”.  Did you write this or other poems with the idea in the back of your mind that Brian will make the music?

 

Rick:  ‘sounds alien’ came from a collection of consciously shorter work that I was writing at the time it was made (I think around 2006) and almost certainly these shorter poems were influenced by the fact I was working with Brian and other musicians and with music in mind. The rhythm of these words certainly lend themselves to manipulation or repetition (very much in the vein of what Tagore said to Einstein about ‘Eastern’ music with its words that were not necessarily anything other than structural stepping stones in a greater and more vivid picture.

These words also relate to a long term love of ‘drum and bass’ music, with the ability it had to take me out of my own thoughts through its broken beat repetitions and alterations. It is worth mentioning here that I think it was listening to music with live MCs and rappers that first made me interested in ‘poetry’, I have always loved hearing a voice adding its layers to music, and in the rare instances that the images are vivid too, that is my musical heaven.

I do draw a great deal of fuel from music and drums, as a writer but also just as a stress reliever in day to day life. If I remember correctly Brian picked these words from the group of short poems I brought to one of our sessions and read them with Aylie over an existing piece. We made this track in the same session as ‘multimedia’ and ‘the airman’ (which were written with the words as starting points).

 

CLOUD 4  

 

Michael:  And then there is this wonderful poem – and the wonderful song „Cloud 4“. For someone who likes Brian singing it´s  a bit sad that  it is so short, but the form is perfect. Do you have a relationship to his song albums… have you been a fan of Brian´s music before you met him personally. I mean he had written great  song lyrics in his song albums, and then there is the ambient work full of strange moods that might inspire the writing of  poems with the music running in the background, So what´s your story with Brian´s music?

 

Rick: I grew up with Brian’s music forming part of the background of my life without realising it. A lot of people of my generation can say that. I didn’t have a direct experience of or knowledge of Brian’s music until I met him. It is lucky really, because I had no preconception of working with him, and so no reference to either influence me or intimidate me. I have learned so much from him and have been really interested to discover his work after meeting the man, rather than the other way round. I have to admit that it was a good few years even after working with him that I really grasped his attitude to lyrics. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone that first day if I had known what I was letting myself in for! I did actually have a crack at writing words for a lot of the songs that came out very differently in his previous two ‘song’ albums, including the lovely ‘Strange Overtones’.

I love his song ‘This’ incidentally and I think that is a good example of his approach to lyric writing as I can imagine the words came in streams and in servitude to the music. I’ve also heard some unreleased songs that are just stunning and perhaps lyrically incomplete. Perhaps my story with Brian’s music is that of the covert secret operative who has had access to the vaults. My relationship to all of his work, across art forms, is one of ongoing illumination. Most recently I’ve read about Stafford Beer and loved those parts of his work I could understand, and while I still perhaps know less of Brian’s ‘song albums’ than some do, I have certainly heard him sing a lot.

A quick aside, regarding the length of ‘Cloud 4’. The option of continuing with it and building it did come up, but we both thought it delivered its message. As an aside to an aside, I remember also Brian saying that one of his favourite songs ever, Maurice Williams’ ‘Stay’ was the perfect song encapsulated in 1 minute and 39 seconds. I certainly know what that song is saying!

 

THE RAIN WAS HAMMERING DOWN

 

Michael:  Starting  reading a poem with the title “multimedia”  I didn´t expect some strange archaic rituals? What triggered this fantasy of caves and elemental sounds…?

 

Rick: Aboriginal spot paintings, Australia, Fire, Music, ‘Click Sticks’ and also the ‘archaic’ rituals that are carried out in techno parties all over the world or anywhere where people dance to drums. A lot of us find release in dancing to loud beats (expertly so in Germany). I wrote this at a time where a lot of self conscious multimedia art was around and it made me think that mixing art, dancing, music and ecstatic energy was nearly as old as the most ancient human practices and not perhaps as clever as smug artists were implying (in the ‘Dreambirds’ years!). I had also seen an Aboriginal man on ‘walkabout’ in central Sydney which was a contrast that had a great impact on me in a country whose real history fascinated me, with it’s stories of totemic beings singing the world into existence and naming the land. The very common need for release is the thing that triggered the fantasy, projected onto an outback scene from the other side of the world. It is a poem that is proudly from my youth, when the political climate and behaviour of a lot of my peers seemed a million miles removed from what I thought was real.

 

Michael:   Did Brian tell you why he decided to sing the last track of the album with an utterly deep voice. The “silence” before it is well-chosen after the poem that ended with pure optimism and the words  “things will be good”.   The change of mood makes the silent period nearly necessary, and,  what  seemed to be a happy ending of the album turns into something dark. Can you give some suggestions about your perception of this last track?

 

Rick:  I am going to take some credit here for pushing Brian to do something he wasn’t necessarily comfortable doing. We were in a new part of his studio, he had moved all of his equipment into what had previously been an office, with large glass skylight windows. The rain was hammering down in heavy drops, the daylight had disappeared behind the clouds, and he had this dark and thrilling sound on the go. In short, the stage was set to try ‘Breath of Crows’, a slow meditation that is both dark and uplifting in my opinion. His choice of singing voice fitted the whole atmosphere, and I pushed him to carry on with this sung approach. I think he enjoyed confounding his own doubts, and I love this track. The silence was completely necessary, yes, and the atmosphere too different from the rest of the album to place anywhere else.

As for my perception it is completely bound up in where the poem was written, which was under a Mumbai monsoon, in my small room over there, which was at tree level and meant I lived in close proximity to the city’s crow population. It was the culmination of a lot of reading, thinking, working as a teacher at Utpal Shanghvi School, and living closely with these very intelligent animals in a culture that revered and took notice of all living things. The song is perhaps like a non religious hymn.

 

Michael:  Anything you like to add? At the end…

 

Rick:  I would just like to add that working with Brian enabled me for the first time to watch a full time artist at work; someone as committed to his work as a research scientist and constantly pushing himself and his ideas and modes of thinking. While the working process necessitated give and take I never once felt anything other than his complete equal and this is down to his total commitment to remaining open and curious to the world. I am proud of the album and the journey we have taken to realise it, but most of all I am just very grateful to have been given the opportunity to meet him and work with him. I hope you enjoy the record, and give it some good quality time to listen to (perhaps on shuffle mode for best effect).

Hier, mit diesen beiden Texten über das Teamwork Eno/Holland, endet mein erster Teil der Remixe alter Texte aus dem Jahre 2011. Eine Fortsetzung folgt im Mai. 2012 werden dann, wenn wir mal positiv denken, weitere Manas  dazustossen, und den Blog in ein munteres Perpetuum mobile neuer und alter Texte verwandeln. Wir sollten im kommenden Jahr den Textraum 2012 / 2013 öffnen. Damit der Chor vielstimmiger wird. Dieser Text hier ist natürlich remixt, und bietet eine verdichtete Version meiner Besprechung von „Drums Between The Bells“. 

 

1 – PRIMORDIAL SLUDGE

 

From early on, Brian Eno has been quite sceptical about words, their meanings, their ability to distract our attention from sound. So, although having written outstanding, at times surreal lyrics for his brilliant four song albums in the seventies („Here Come The Warm Jets“, „Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)“, „Another Green World“ (this perfect mélange of songs and purely atmospheric pieces) and „Before and After Science“), he had never added the lyrics.

Now, on this album, the poems are printed. An interesting problem for the master of Ambient Music: poems consist of a highly condensed language, everything within a poem requires careful attention, every syllable, every space between lines, every picture, every breath words take. Eno’s trick: everything becomes sound; the listener decides for himself where to move, foreground, background, wordwise, soundwise. The music offers a broad spectrum: funky passages, trash jazz, exotica a la Eno, post-Kraut-electronics and drifting-spheres, soulful chamber music. Inspired stuff.

 

2 – INTO THE MURKY WATER

 

Poems and music – a special affair! „Drums Between The Bells“ will speak, with an open heart, to people who look for vital music they have never heard before, and to those who are curious about a still quite living thing called modern poetry. Remembering the Eno-Byrne masterpiece „My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts“ (1980) with the cut-and-sample approach to speaking and singing voices (mad priests, talking heads, singers from the Lebanon etc), the new record leads from the „bush of ghosts“ to a „theatre of voices“.

Nine voices (most of them women) give life to words, sometimes these voices (including the ones of Brian and Rick) are pure realism, sometimes they are morphed and treated. It’s never a gimmick, it always serves the words, the meanings, the sensual quality! Brian calls these tracks „speech songs“. And, using the language of people who come from other parts of the world, enriches the English words with a surprising, non-professional freshness, a special vibe!

In the brilliant slow motion piece, „the real“, a female voice is speaking about our ability to see or see not „the real in things“, full of repetitions and small changes. A sophisticated way of mixing hypnotic induction with perception theory: solid earth suddenly feels like murky water. The last lines one can (depending on your state of mind) clearly indentify tell us: „while real runs out and seems to see the real as it runs“ – then the voice turns from a soft speaker to a strange species. Seductive.

 

3 – THE MADNESSES OF MOOD

 

What do you think, Brian Eno loves about Rick Holland’s poems? I read his little book „Story the Flowers“ and found an interesting mix of careful attention to everyday life, philosophy, humour and science. Small towns, big towns, coastal areas are portrayed in a deeply sensual way (I’m happy to leave out the word „spiritual“ here). There is always an enigma that won’t be solved too soon. Something that hangs in the air. „I thought this was the kind of poetry I wanted to work with. The poems were short and sharp“, Eno writes in the foreword of a special edition, „their images were strong and the language memorable enough to reward repeated listening.“ The music drives, waits, suggests, breathes, swirls, stops, penetrates. And it does a lot more.

Sometimes the words approach the singing area, but it takes a while till we discover an oldfashioned thing called song: near the end, Eno starts singing, and, you know, so many people – nevertheless how much they love his ambient works – have just waited too long for new songs of Mr. Eno („Wrong Way Up“, 1990, „Just Another Day On Earth“, 2005). Now one can take a deep breath, when listening to the brilliance of „cloud 4“ – but, what’s that: a song that could last forever stops after one minute and fourtythree seconds?! We call this English humour. And remember that old saying: brevity is the essence of wit. But, well, I have to confess: the form of the song is perfect, there’s a opening part, a middle section and an uplifting ending:

 

„the madnesses of mood / weatherfronts we know / hem us in / or free us like children /just one day apart /a lifetime in the sky / sun, scan the sky like flight / search for any sign / (things) will be alright.“

 

4 – GRAMOPHONE CIRCLES AND BACKGROUND DUST

 

And then? Then comes nothing (of course a very Cagean and well placed nothing, 56 seconds of silence) – and after that, a quiet revelation, another fantastic song: Eno delivers „Breath of Crows“ with a deepness in his voice you have rarely ever heared. Robert Wyatt will send kisses! Eno sings with a vulnerability, a slowness, an intensity that is not so far away from the last Scott Walker albums.

 

„my god is in the breath of crows / it grows and shrinks with nature’s wish / a fire with no link to the wish of man / but it must be absolute, this god, /for when the mind is still it moves. / my god is in the breath of crows / may i not delude my i to think / he grows to grant my wish / or wash my sin / but let me watch in wonder / as he makes his work / wonder in this. / the sounds of holy night abound / kestrel calls and bells / drink the air /and the race for meaning quells /(let it in) /or the calls will sound like hollow tin /or gramophone circles / and background dust / i must replaced by must / by scent and sense /wonder this.“

 

5 – NO FINAL WORDS

 

I have no doubt that first reviews will be controversial, „thumbs up“ or „thumbs down“. Strange beasts (for sure those that come along with modern poetry) easily produce defense mechanisms a la „highbrow“ or „very intellectual“. There is nothing highbrow in this work. And don’t expect some final words about the album. Many of you will be surprised, I think, in more than one or two ways! Old school? No, this is cuttin‘ edge! And Eno never overeggs the pudding: „Drums Between The Bells“ is a wild thing on ots own peculiar ways.

 

P.S. The „special edition“ offers a foreword (we get to know somethin about the history of speech-songs), Eno’s imagery inspired by the music, and purely instrumental versions of the tracks – highly recommended, too! By the way, all the music is performed by Brian Eno. On some pieces Leo Abrahams plays guitar, Seb Rochford does some excellent drum work on the opening track, and the wonderful Nell Catchpole (who already added her magic in the days of WRONG WAY UP) plays violin and viola to several pieces.

 
 
Vor fast auf den Tag genau drei Jahren habe ich auf Joan Didions „South and West“ hingewiesen. Das Buch ist heute noch so empfehlenswert wie damals.

Nun liegt ein neues Werk von ihr vor, ein Essayband, der zwölf durchweg bereits veröffentlichte Beiträge aus den Jahren zwischen 1968 und 2000 versammelt. An Werke wie das erwähnte „South and West“, in dem es um die Südstaaten geht, oder „Slouching Towards Bethlehem“, das auf eine desillusionierende Weise die Hippiekultur San Franciscos zerlegt, kommt „Let Me Tell You What I Mean“ leider nicht heran. Dem Buch fehlt der rote Faden, manche der Essays sind für mein Gefühl schlicht langweilig, ließen mich mit der Frage „Warum erzählt sie mir das?“ zurück, und ich glaube, dass sie das manchmal auch selbst nicht weiß. Didions Schreibstil ist nicht einfach, ihre in Teilen sehr langfädige und zerfahrene Erzählweise macht den Einstieg nicht leichter, man muss schon einige Konzentration aufbringen, um nicht aus dem Text zu fallen. Mir ist manches auch zu selbstreflektierend, etwa „Why I Write“ — ja mein Gott, täte sie’s nicht, würden wir halt etwas anderes lesen, und die Welt würde sich noch genau so drehen.

Interessant wird die Lektüre aber dann, wenn sie einen Anknüpfungspunkt an eigene Interessen bietet oder satirisch, ironisch oder einfach witzig ist. Letzteres ist eindeutig nicht Didions Stärke, es kommt aber vor. Ihre Story über Nancy Reagen ist so eine, oder „Some Women“ über die Frauenfotos von Robert Mapplethorpe. Auch der Text über das Gefühl, das sich einstellt, wenn einen das College seiner Wahl ablehnt, ist leicht nachvollziehbar. Alles in allem aber ist mir das aber für ein Buch ein wenig zu dünn.

„Let Me Tell You What I Mean“ schleppt ein 35 Seiten langes Vorwort mit sich herum, das so tun möchte, als sei dies ein unglaublich wichtiges Buch. Zudem steht am Ende des Buches der Hinweis, man habe das Buch in einer alten, wiederausgegrabenen Schrifttype namens „Didot“ gesetzt (zwischen den Zeilen soll man wohl lesen: zu Ehren der Autorin). Die Schrift gehört offensichtlich zur klassischen Bodoni-Familie — eigentlich eine schöne Buchschrift, aber sie darf nicht zu klein sein und braucht viel Luft um sich herum. Dafür hat dieses kleinformatige Büchlein aber zu wenig Platz, und so flimmern einem nach einer Weile die Augen.

Joan Didion bleibt aber, das sei klar gesagt, eine wichtige Stimme, wenn es um Entwicklung und Zustand der USA geht. Sie hat da einen sehr scharfen, sezierenden Blick. Zeit, einmal wieder in „Slouching Towards Bethlehem“, „South and West“ oder „The White Album“ hineinzuschauen.

 

Das erste Mal hörte ich „Music Has The Right To Children“ an der Uni, und zu der Zeit hörte ich viel Bands wie Zero 7 und Air, und alles war sehr „chill“ … eine Menge Leute, die Gras rauchten, die sich wirklich auf den Sound der Dinge einließen. Ich hatte mich von der Ernsthaftigkeit, mit der ich mich mit meinen Instrumenten beschäftigte, meine Noten machte, Covers sang und solche Sachen, gelöst, und irgendwie  zu diesem Ort hin entwickelt, an dem eine ganze Klangwelt in meinem Kopf explodierte. Vielleicht haben die Zeit, die Drogen und so ein bisschen damit zu tun, aber was auch immer es war, es erlaubte mir, mich ein bisschen zu befreien, und diese Platte von Boards of Canada fasst diesen Prozess einfach zusammen – und die einzigartigen Sounds, die diese Alben hatten, eröffneten mir Wege, Musik zu machen, die wirklich bei mir geblieben sind.

 
 

 
 

Manatreffen fällt wegen zu vieler Wellen aus.

 

„There is a long tradition of pastoral music capturing a quintessential Englishness, running from Vaughan Williams through the English folk tradition to more recent names like Robert Wyatt and Talk Talk. Further down this line you’ll find Epic45.“

 

Now, after one of so many radio shows radios, the car ride. EPIC45 is playing, from their album „Weathering“. This record will run all night long. It is a long car ride. Everything on the verge of falling apart in their songs,  birdsong,  bells, beehives. Ancient synthesizers never failing the decay. Violins softly intruding, softly disappearing. Here, the end of the world is called Staffordshire. No joker in sight, nothing takes center stage. EPIC45 are masters of whispering. Ben Holton and Rob Glover avoid, well, epic gestures: even in their most catchy moments, their notes are prepared to dissolve. Lullabies for grown-ups that, strange enough, do not really lull into sleep: there is always a glass of fine Merlot for your favourite ghost. Catch a pale memory and turn it into a song: hush, baby, hush. One more time: hush, baby, hush. If you go to heaven in a car, be sure it’s crammed with campfire songs. Tears are allowed to run, you’re sipping miserable coffee, you´re running on empty. The funniest thing of all, at some point, that quiet smile on your face. Rewind. Peace out.

 

 
 

Ich weiss gar nicht mehr, wo ich es las, aber jemand schrieb vor Tagen im Netz, dass sein Seminar an der Universität einst eine Reise nach Paris angetreten hatte. Einer der Dozenten hatte den Studenten zuvor einen Rat mit auf  den Weg gegeben. Das Beste, was man in einer weltbekannten Stadt, ob Köln oder San Francisco, tun könne, sei es, nach Belieben zu mäandern und sich zu verlaufen! (bitte nicht leichtfertig nachahmen; es gibt no-go-areas in jeder Stadt, auch nach Corona 2023; Anm. d. Red.). 

Er hatte im Grunde Recht. Als sie einfach nur umherschlenderten und die touristischen hot spots mieden, fanden sie eine ganz andere Wertschätzung für die Stadt, die nicht mehr bloss ein Widerhall der Reiseführer war. Etliches kam ihnen befremdlich vor, aber sie verstanden, zumindest intuitiv, etwas von der Dynamik und der Fszination geheimer Winkel. Vergessener Orte. Ein ähnliches Gefühl stellt sich ein, wenn man sich „Invisible Cities“ von „A Winged Victory For The Sullen“ anhört.

Die Kompositionen waren ursprünglich angelegt als Teil einer Show, mit Thester, Musik, Tanz, „Videos & Visuals“ – das volle Programm, und es ist dem Duo hoch anzurechnen, dass sie ein Werk geschaffen haben, das vollkommen autonom besteht, ohne jeden multimedialen Kontext. Alles ist inspiriert von Italo Calvinos Buch „Die Unsichtbaren Städte“, einer Reihe von fiktiven Gesprächen zwischen Kublai Khan und Marco Polo.

Khan fragt Polo nach Städten in seinem immer größer werdenden Reich, die er nie gesehen hat und nie sehen wird. Polos Antworten, poetisch, philosophisch, ausufernd, wirken wie Parabeln auf das Leben, die menschliche Natur – und die Lust am Unbekannten. Solch Unbekanntem begegnet auch der geneigte Hörer, der zuweilen erschrocken auffahren wird, und heilfroh ist, dass „A Winged Victory For The Sullen“ ihre alten Erik Satie-Obessionen endgültig überwunden haben und, neben purer Klangfantastik, auch der Verwirrung der Sinne, dem Schaudern, und der Verstörung Raum geben. Hinreissend, wie das, mit all den dunklen Schatten und Unheimlichkeiten, eine verdammt verführerische Angelegenheit bleibt! (In der Musik gibt es übrigens, liebe Redaktion, keine  „no-go-areas“!)

 

Zwischenstation in der Heide. Die natürlich nicht vollends blühte, sonst wäre der Touristenstrom dank der büschelweise pink funkelnden Heidekräuter einer Bundesgartenschau vergleichbar. Nein, mutterseelenallein geht es dort zu – sogar eine schönen Reiterin zu begegnen, hatte Seltenheitswert. Ich kam auf einem Bauernhof unter, der mir zwei schwarze Nächte voller Stockfinsternis bot. Ohne Taschenlampe irrte ich einmal über einen der umliegenden Acker, und die spärlichen Lichter des Gehöfts wirkten im Abendnebel bald so entfernt wie lang verglühte Himmelskörper. Auch die Wolken hielten sich bedeckt, und so rammte ich einen Kilometerstein und schrie kurz auf. – „Don´t get lost in Lüneburg Heath“, sang Brian Eno einst, in geselliger Runde mit Moebius, Roedelius, und Rother. Ich las noch ein paar Seiten in Jörg Juretzkas Abrechnung mit grstrandeten Hippieträumen („Alles ganz groovy hier“), und verschwand im Land der Träume.

 

Am nächsten Tag landete ich am frühen Nachmittag im Dorfcafe Alte Schule, Hinter den Höfen 7. Der Käsekuchen im Cafe war zwar noch etwas kühl, besass aber eine feine Zitronennote. Dort kann man nicht nur übernachten, umgeben von einem herrlichen Garten, man bewegt sich auch auch in einem Gemäuer, das allerlei Überraschungen bietet, von einem urgemütlichen Tante Emma-Laden bis zu einer riesigen Bücherwand, die eine ganze Front des Cafés einnimmt. Sofort glitten meine Blicke über die Einbände, darunter etliche alte Buchclub-Romane aus den Sechziger Jahren, die unsere Eltern so gern um sich hatten. Mein Blick blieb aber gnadenlos an den schwarzgelben Krimis aus der Diogenes Taschenbuchreihe hängen, die in meiner Studienzeit in Würzburg  mehr Platz in meinem Regal einnahmen als die Werke von Sigmund Freud. Reihenweise verschlang ich damals Eric Ambler (Lieblingbsuch: „Die Maske des Dimitrios“) oder Patricia Highsmith (Lieblingsbuch: „Das Zittern des Fälschers“).

 

Und hier fand ich ein offensichtlich gelesenes Exemplar von Jonathan Latimer: „Den Toten ist’s egal“. Den Mann kannte ich  nur vom Namen, er schrieb seine Detektivgeschichten vor allem in den 30er Jahren. An der Kasse wollte ich meinen Käsekuchen bezahlen, und fragte, ob ich der Hausbibliothek diesen kleinen Roman von Latimer abkaufen könne, zum Original- oder Sammlerpreis, egal. Aus dem Off kam die Stimme einer Dame: „Nein!“ Ich sah niemanden.  Dann kam sie nach vorne, eine opulente Erscheinung, und erzählte mir von der Bedeutung einer solchen Bücherwand, die halt gelebtes Leben sei, und kein Dekor. Ich schenkte ihr meinen Hundeblick, legte den Kopf zur Seite, und sie sagte: „Sie sind ein Hinterfurzer, ein Hinterfurzer sind Sie!“ Das sagte sie durchaus charmant, und ich fühlte mich wie in einem frühen Urs Widmer-Roman. Sie drückte mir das Buch in die Hand, forderte mich auf, ihr dafür einen anderen guten Krimi zu schicken.

 

Am Abend dieses Tages verschwand ich mit Jonathan Latimer im Bett und fand mich in den Everglades wieder, in Südflorida, in den späten 30er Jahren. Latimer verfügt über einen eleganten Humor und beherrscht die Kunst der scharfzüngigen Ping-Pong-Dialoge. Er hatte auch in Hollywood Erfolg, mit den Drehbüchern zu Hammetts „Der gläserne Schlüssel“ und Woolrichs „Die Nacht hat tausend Augen“. Herrliche Rumstromer-Tage in der Heide. Wochen später schickte ich der Chefin eine der ganz grossen Spionageromane, „Der Rabe“, von Lionel Davidson.

Eine Woche hat die Schallplatte hier verpackt herumgestanden. Eine Mischung aus Präsenzunterricht und Homeschooling (wahrscheinlich gut das als Lehrer auch aus Elternperspektive zu erleben, allerdings kann ich auf manche Erfahrungen verzichten), einem zickenden Computer, gesundheitlichen Scherereien, gepaart mit der ja nicht gerade rosigen Gesamtsituation hat mich voll ausgelastet – keine Zeit für Kari Ikonen, kaum Momente überhaupt zum Musikhören. Am Freitag dann ein erstes Hören, während meine Tochter etwas backt. Alles andere als optimale Bedingungen, zumal „Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions“ eher Ruhe benötigt, für den Raum zwischen den Tönen und dem Nachhall – die Geräusche von Küchenmaschine und Schneebesen sind da eher störend. Ein zweites Hören dann am Samstagabend, im Dunkeln, pro Seite ein Glas Balvenie, ein drittes dann vormittags mit Keks und Kaffee. Ein streng angelegter Klanggarten, in dem munterer Wildwuchs herrscht: wilder Hopfen wuchert über geometrische Beete, zarte Frühblüher schauen aus trockenem Herbstlaub hervor, Wassertriebe zittern in der Luft. Rhythmisches Klopfen, Gegenstände auf oder zwischen den Saiten und eine erfundene Vorrichtung, ein Maquiano, bereichern das Klangbild des Flügels. In den letzten beiden Stücken höre ich Instrumente, die nicht gespielt werden, Trompete, Saxophon, Bass, Schlagzeug, so wie das Auge im März manchmal schon statt den Knospen die Blüten am Magnolienbaum sieht.