Friday, November 26, 2010

RIP: Ingrid Pitt 1937-2010



Ingrid Pitt, seductive queen of the Hammer horror films who survived a Nazi concentration camp as a girl, has died aged 73, a spokesman for her agent said on Wednesday.
The actress started her screen career in the mid-1960s with roles in Spanish films and minor, uncredited parts in "Doctor Zhivago" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
She appeared in the 1968 classic "Where Eagles Dare" alongside Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and five years later in the mystery drama "The Wicker Man."
But it was for her roles in erotic horror films "The Vampire Lovers" (1970) and "Countess Dracula" (1971) that she was best known in Britain.
"Underrated as both an actress and a writer, Pitt was a warm but stubbornly enigmatic figure," said Marcus Hearn, a historian of Hammer horror movies and a friend of the actress.
Pitt was also a writer, producing two novels set during the Peron era in Argentina and several horror-related works of fiction.
She was born in Poland in 1937 to a mother of Jewish descent, and was interned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two at the age of five -- an experience she recounted in her autobiography "Life's a Scream."
She told an interviewer in 2006 that she did not particularly enjoy watching horror movies.
"I was in a concentration camp as a child and I don't want to see horror," Pitt said. "I think it's very amazing that I do horror films when I had this awful childhood. But maybe that's why I'm good at it."
Her autobiography also describes Pitt's search for her father throughout the European Red Cross refugee camps and her escape from East Berlin, one step ahead of the police.
"I always had a big mouth and used to go on about the political schooling interrupting my quest for thespian glory," she wrote. "I used to think like that. Not good in a police state."
Pitt collapsed recently and died in London on Tuesday, shortly after her 73rd birthday.

Coil - The Ape of Naples (Threshold House 2005)



Although the accidental death of Coil's Jhonn Balance in November 2004 came as a horrific shock to his friends and fans, in many ways it seemed an event for which Balance himself was hardly unrehearsed. As his longtime Coil partner Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson has put it, Balance's work has "described or addressed that Very Moment" time and again. And so it is on The Ape of Naples, an exceptional collection assembled from Balance's final recordings and earlier, uncompleted material originally recorded at Trent Reznor's New Orleans studio. Given the circumstances of its construction, the album is a remarkably unified work, its every meditative gesture alloyed with a looming, unmistakable sense of impending loss and/or transition.

Throughout their 20-year recording career, Coil have struck a careful symmetry between spontaneous, animistic creation and exacting ritualistic structure, often with specific alchemical intentions for each record. So while it is impossible to know what ultimate design Balance had for the material on The Ape of Naples, credit must be given to Christopherson for his skillful and devoted stewardship to this music. Several of these songs-- "A Cold Cell", "Teenage Lightning 2005", "Heaven's Blade"-- have previously appeared in another forms. Here, however, Christopherson has significantly reworked each track, mixing electronics and acoustic instruments with the help of sympathetic collaborators Simon Norris, Cliff Stapleton, and Thighpaulsandra-- resulting in an album of astonishing cohesion, vitality, and undisguised poignancy.

Judged by the evidence on these 11 tracks, Balance remained a commanding and utterly captivating presence to the end, and these selections do well to showcase his expressive, multifaceted vocals. Augmented by the carnival textures of accordion, hurdy-gurdy, and singing saw, his vocals on the theatric "Tattooed Man" has an almost effortless elegance ("There's a man lying down in a grave somewhere/ with the same tattoos as me") while beneath the agitated electronics and cool jazz snatches on "I Don't Get It" his heavily effected vocals spin as just another enigmatic cogwheel in Coil's diabolical engine.

The album closes with its most curious track, a cover of "Going Up?", the theme song from the long-running British sitcom "Are You Being Served?" As the closing song of Balance's final live performance, the cover has taken on an unlikely significance in Coil's history. In their hands it undergoes such an extraordinary transmutation that it'd likely go unrecognized by even the staunchest fans of the BBC comedy. With its tempo slowed to a funereal waltz, the song gathers an eerie, unsettling force as Balance is joined on vocals by Francis Testory, the two alternately repeating the lines "Going up" and "It just is" with a contented resignation-- as serene a conclusion one could expect from a shaman who never shied from penning his own epitaphs... *Pitchfork



Thursday, November 25, 2010

Throbbing Gristle - TG24 (2002)











Throbbing Gristle were noted for their live performances, which were often experimental and quite different from their pre-recorded work. In addition to studio albums, a large number of recordings of live shows were released, of varying sound quality. A concise history of Throbbing Gristle and COUM Transmissions can be found in Simon Ford's book Wreckers of Civilisation. A 25 CD boxed set,TG24, documenting many live Throbbing Gristle performances was released in December 2002. A follow-up to this boxset chronicling the last 10 performances was released as TG+ in January of 2004. These releases accumulated recordings that had originally been released on cassette-only boxed sets and individually released vinyl albums of official and bootleg status. Long out of circulation, the new releases sparked a renewed interest in the band.
Throbbing Gristle were scheduled to play a live show in May 2004 at the RE~TG festival, but the festival was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, rising costs and scheduling complications. They decided to play anyway and set up a show at The Astoria in London on Sunday May 16th 2004, which was the same day they were to play at RE~TG. The show was free but open only to those who had tickets to RE~TG, whether they had obtained a refund or transferred the ticket to a later concert at All Tomorrow's Parties, in December 2004. The show was filmed by the band, and was released as part of the DVD box set TGV. It was Throbbing Gristle's first live performance in nearly 23 years to the day.
The reformed band (with all four original members) then played a concert in Italy in June 2005 and two concerts at the Volksbühne, Berlin, Germany on December 31, 2005 and January 1, 2006. The first show was a live performance and the second an improvised live soundtrack to Derek Jarman's film In The Shadow Of The Sun. On December 29, 2005, an exhibition entitled 'Industrial Annual Report' opened at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin-Mitte. It was a major retrospective exhibition of artworks and historical documents produced by Throbbing Gristle, curated by Markus Müller, in collaboration with Cosey Fanni Tutti. *taken from wikipedia

1976

1979

A listener's guide can be found: HERE 

This post is my tribute for the death of 

Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson 1955 - 2010 R.I.P.

RIP: Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson 1955 - 2010


It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Peter Christopherson, a.k.a. Sleazy, member of such seminal groups as Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Coil. He reportedly died in his sleep yesterday, November 24, at the age of 55.
The initial announcement came roughly an hour ago, at around 4 AM EST, when Throbbing Gristle members Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter tweeted the same message:
Our dearest beautiful Sleazy left this mortal coil as he slept in peace last night.words cannot express our grief...

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Various Artists - Anatolia Rocks, a musical trip through Turkey 1968 - 83


Anatolian rock combines traditional Arabesque and psychedelic elements and some good rock 'n' roll as only Turks would play it...


Download

Ynos - Shadow Priest (2010)



Stare into the eye of the storm and the shadow priest will consume your soul...Sludge freshly squized from the swamp is the only words that can describe this hypnotic vortex.
Behind this hides Master Tefkros on swamp bass and sexy solos, Witchburner Crowley who knocks on wooden coffins and Cultist Brother Ray on black chants...





Friday, November 12, 2010