15-9-93 Le Sunset, Paris 16-9-93 Le Sunset, Paris 17-9-93 Le Sunset, Paris
25-10-93 New Morning, Paris
??-11-93 Paris (5 hour show) ??-11-93 Paris (5 hour show)
On the 25th October Seventh Records will be staging a concert at the New Morning club in Paris to celebrate the simultaneous release of albums by Patrick Gauthier, The Christian Vander Trio and Patrick Gauthier's group. The next OFFERING album will be a called 'Les Cygnes et les Corbeaux'.
In November, there will be a big festival in Paris of Vander's music on two nights, with five hours of music each night. This, as you will have guessed, ties in with the Seventh anniversary of Seventh Records. Bands currently scheduled to appear include MAGMA, OFFERING, LES VOLX DE MAGMA, STELLA VANDER, and SIMON GOUBERT. We also expect special guests to turn up if they want to join in, but no specific names have been mentioned as yet. One band that I thought would want to play is DON'T DIE but so far I have not heard them mentioned for this event.
Sadly, the great SUN RA has fired his last retro rockets. The theatrical master of interstellar jazz has finally returned to his "home planet, Saturn", aged 79. He leaves a vast legacy of over 600 albums of his mystic brew of space sounds and highly orchestrated modern jazz. His penchant for extraordinary, space-age costumes and ambitious, pioneering music charted a parallel course to Christian Vander. Based in New York from the early '60s, the group to which he devoted his life, his ARKESTRA, were probably the most rehearsed collection of musicians in the galaxy. Robert Muge's fascinating documentary (originally broadcast on Channel 4 TV) is now available on VHS (PAL)
I hear that SONO Magazine did a big colour feature on Christian Vander's 'Les Voyages de Christophe Colomb' in their May 93 edition.
Vander La Force! is the title of a major article by Frédéric Soupa in Batteur Magazine # 60 (Septembre '93), reproduction in Ork Alarm! is absolutely forbidden... so this is also an essential purchase from: Batteur Magazine.
This year's UK Electronica Festival will again feature a varied clutch of synth soloists and high-tech groups, including Steve Palmer's ambient echo guitar band MOOCH. The top billing goes to Richard Pinhas "probably the world's most powerful synthesist/guitarist" (with John Livengood). Pinhas is certainly a major coup for this festival and he will be promoting 'DWW'. Pinhas' career reads like a history of continental electronic music. Strongly influenced by the rock guitar of Robert Fripp, his band HELDON combined heavy sequencing, jazz influences from musicians such as bassist Bernard Paganotti, screaming lead guitar and flowing Moog melodies. On his later solo albums Pinhas incorporated the minimalism of Philip Glass and Brian Eno - as well as featuring science fiction author Norman Spinrad on vocals! Audion describe him as "the spearhead of a new genre in music... a major talent to be reckoned with and still one to take chances". So, if you like Heldon you can't really afford to miss his only gig this year at the Shaw Théâtre, Euston Road, London on Sunday 26-9-93.
XCRANIEUM, the avant-rock band from Los Angeles have lost their bassist, Greg Gunthner, who has moved to San Francisco. However, work is continuing on their next project, which will be called 'Carnage'. Apparently this will be quite brutal in comparison to their earlier recordings. Meanwhile, Greg Gunthner has joined a project in San Francisco called NONOX (pronounced "na naks"). This is a guitar/bass/drums combo fronted by a female vocalist. Their style is similar to the ART BEARS, MASSACRE etc. Greg expects the group to develop into something very violent!
ZUKUNFT are hoping to stage a concert in Strasbourg at the end of the year.