Charlemagne Palestine - Godbear (produced by Lee)
 

Charlemagne Palestine - Godbear

 

 

A solo pianist of a different stripe! Original 70s minimalist Charlemagne Palestine used to play exhaustively long concerts when he first appeared on the experimental Soho loft scene. I was lucky enough to catch him in 1978 performing his signature "Strumming Music." I remember that he prefaced that hynoptic piece with a lush Debussy-like prelude of cascading figures over which he chanted in a keening soprano voice. What a sound! Over the years he sort of lost interest in playing music, devoting more time to his visual art and other obsessive pursuits like skywriting! Produced in the 90s, GODBEAR is Charlemagne's Greatest Hits, containing truncated versions of "Strumming Music" and "The Lower Depths" but still excellently recorded by Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. @320.

Excellent.

thanks

ohh charlemagne is fucking brilliant.

ooh, thanks.

New release:

Charlemagne Palestine
From Etudes to Cataclysms [Sub Rosa; 2008]
3.5/5


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Styles: weird piano, minimalism, drone
Others: Anthony Pateras, John Cage, James Blackshaw, Terry Riley, Steve Reich
Links: Charlemagne Palestine - Sub Rosa


The album cover of From Etudes to Cataclysms bears a badly focused photo of a man (presumably the artist himself) ascending a staircase. This is an appropriate visual summary of the music contained within: the staircase, of course, is a common metaphor for the series of intervals in the chromatic scale, and it’s Charlemagne Palestine’s gradual, exhaustive blurring of a chosen interval that is the core substance of this music.
Reminiscent of his Strumming Music of 1974, in this imposing work we find the pianist flaunting one of music’s most devilish mechanisms: the tritone or diabolus in musica. Palestine splinters and multiplies this dissonant interval on the “Doppio Borgato,” which has a normal piano keyboard for the hands and a second, foot-operated keyboard on the floor. He sometimes moonlights as a carilloneur, playing a tower of massive church bells and a peculiar piano that enables him to explore a similar gamut of overlapping harmonics. Unlike bells, however, a piano can be de-tuned, and Palestine’s willful abuse of the sustain pedal ensures that notes are smudged flat and sharp over the course of each piece, further complicating the layered tonalities.
The “Etudes” of the first disc each cleave incessantly to their titular tritone intervals. These pieces seem to test the pianist’s threshold for pain as much as his virtuosity, as he is obligated to hammer away at that infernal interval measure after measure, page after page. The cataclysms of the second disc rain down with greater variety, generating tension and shifting veils of color through the accumulation of stormy arpeggios and dramatic shifts of register. It’s sumptuous, moody, and enveloping stuff. Together, the études and cataclysms make for a didactic pairing that yields lovely results: the first disc is Palestine’s arid lecture on harmony and dissonance; the second is his bravura demonstration of those principles at work.
For devotees of minimalism, From Etudes to Cataclysms is definitely worth a shot, as it showcases a more aggressive approach to the aesthetic. However, those unfamiliar with minimalism may be better served by tackling some Steve Reich or Terry Riley before attempting the unrelenting challenges in store here. Either way, this album of double piano is a pretty unique work of art.
1. Super High Tones 2. Tritone Octave 5 3. Tritone Octave 4 4. Tritone Octave 3 5. Tritone Octave 2 6. Tritone Octave 1/1 7. Tritone Octave 1 – Part I 8. Tritone Octave 1 – Part II 9. Tritone Octave 1 – Part III 10. Tritone Octave 1/2 11. Cataclisma 1 12. Cataclisma 2 13. Cataclisma 3 14. Cataclisma 4 15. Cataclisma 5

Many thanks.

I tried to see his performance a year or 2 ago in Chelsea, after waiting for an hour after the start time I went home.

I tried to see his performance at the Rotterdam Film Festival last January, but he went into a rant instead.... or maybe that was the performance.