NITSCH, HERMANN
Das 6-Tage-Speil (Day 3 "Day of Dionysus") pt.1
(Cortical Foundation)
3cd
43.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Packaged in a deluxe gatefold LP sleeve with a handful of gory-but-beautiful, blood-drenched photographs overprinted with shimmering transparent lettering, this triple cd is a partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day performance. Already, the highly dedicated and apparently well-funded Cortical Foundation has presented a huge amount of material from Day Five (a picture disc and an 8cd box set) and some material from Day Six.
Unlike previous releases of Nitsch's musical works where visual evidence of his "actions" (for which his music provides the soundtrack) appear only as album cover art, this time we get a CD-Rom with video of portions of Day 3's activities (the usual Nitsch spectacle of people stomping tomatoes, disembowling butchered pigs, crucifying naked participants, and pouring lots and lots of blood over everything). But regardless of whether that sort of thing interests you, the two audio cds in the set provide what we have come to expect from Hermann Nitsch's orchestrations: tense, swelling masses of atonal strings, the performers told to play loud, and then to play even louder. The major difference in these scores is in how Nitsch arranges the breakdowns of these swells. On one of the discs, Nitsch inserts some festive Polka tunes between his signature walls of sound; on the other, Nitsch required a drummer to back up the drones with stumbling, haphazard beats. His truncated fills and erratic rhythms making it into something almost "free jazz", if anything this dark and droney could be so described. You get the impression that this drummer is slipping and sliding off his drum stool because of all of the blood, and randomly striking his drums on the way down. In conjunction with the ominous, building strings and horns this creates a sound not at all unlike recent AQ fave Crystal Fist. As with almost everything we've heard from Nitsch, droning and mesmerising and magnificent.
RealAudio clip: "Day Of Dionysius 3pm"
RealAudio clip: "Day Of Dionysius 10am"
NITSCH, HERMANN
Das 6-Tage-Speil (Day 3 "Day of Dionysus") pt.2
(Cortical Foundation)
lp + cd
43.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Packaged exactly the same as the triple cd (in the same deluxe gatefold LP sleeve adorned with blood drenched photographs), this vinyl album is the second partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day performance, and features different music than the 3cd offering of Day Three. However, the CD-Rom that comes in both packages is the same, so if you're a Nitsch completist (like some of us) you'll get both pt. 1 and pt. 2 and then have an extra CD-Rom to give to a friend. What a nice thing to do. The music on the vinyl version is of course akin to that of part 1 -- indeed, Nitsch employs both the Polka interludes and the clunky "free jazz" drummer (but to a lesser degree). And like part 1, it's utterly magnificent.