1 night @ the 1001 [2CD]

opis:
Editor's info:
One cd is rare recordings by Brion Gysin himself in his club in Tanger, mid-'50s, the other is a long monologue about Sufi rituals.

1 cd: pioneer moroccan music 2 cd: ritual spoken word + electronic background [temporarly out of stock]

Stylus Magazine:
Writer and painter Brion Gysin planted two seeds in 20th century Western art and literature: he showed Beat icon William S. Burroughs that language can be physically cut into pieces, then he arranged the pieces to better articulate the imagination's wilderness and riot. Old Bull Lee used Gysin's "cut-up" technique to concoct the transgressive fantasias of Naked Lunch. "What are words and what are they doing? Where are they going? The cut-up method treats words as the painter treats his paint, raw material with rules and reasons of its own," Gysin told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. He also helped introduce the world to the musicians from the Moroccan village of Jajouka, who engaged in a millennium-old tradition of trance music that obsessed him.

One Night @ The 1001 compiles recordings that Gysin made of the musicians who performed at his Tangiers café, The Thousand and One Nights, during the 1950s. The album also has a recording of "Dilaloo," his poem detailing an initiation ceremony he attended in Jajouka. Collaborator Ramuntcho Matta is the man responsible for putting One Night together from the 23 tapes Gysin to him before his death in 1986. And while One Night is a great historical document, Matta nearly ruins it. His treatments of the material do everything to distract attention away from the power of Gysin's words.

In "Dilaloo," Gysin pulls and tears up roots from his subconscious. He begins his poem by screaming, imitating his birth. He pulls himself out of the raw earth ("In the past the muttering leaped / In our coughing & spitting / In the silver throats morning / Trust in our bones"). He later sees the face of God ("The sound stood naked in the grass / Music bubbling in the blood / Exploded flesh from the laughing bones / I am Allah / I made you"). By the end, his ego arises from the mire as he declares, "I'm here / That's what is important / Me I'm here / Me." His speech throughout "Dilaloo" is delivered in a tone comparable to a curse-casting or a fatherly lecture given before a punishment.

In the liner notes, Matta writes, "Brion often told me that the real meaning of speech comes from rhythm than from the meaning of the words..." Matta took that statement as a guide and created a synthesizer backdrop to Gysin's performance. He fed the recording through a computer that generated sounds based on the rhythms and frequency of the poet's voice. The treatment could have been intriguing, but Matta turns the poetry into camp and melodrama. The music is just two chords played on a synth-harmonica patch, repeated for an hour. It's nearly unbearable to sit through.

Soothing the pain from that embarrassment is One Night's sublime second half that showcases Gysin's recordings of the musicians he routinely brought into his café. The musicians play no more than a simple beat layered with ecstatic chanting and stringed chords in looped patterns. The music stands in naked contrast to Gysin's "Dilaloo." Their work celebrates life, while Gysin's poem is disgusted by it. The music incites listeners to recognize the divine in everyone, while he attacks his audience. One leaves One Night wondering how these Jajouka masters influenced his work at all-and thankful that Matta allowed their recordings to remain untarnished by Western hands. [Cameron Macdonald]
pelny tekst recenzji na www.stylusmagazine.com