Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Hiatus et Heratius

These 2 are for that amazing mutant sounds guy, I hope he needs.

Two similar named groups, one is avant gardish jazz, the other is avant gardish weird. Ever since the beatles did revolution 9 it seems the collage mix of bizarrity has been a standard through the sixties and seventies. Prog kept the flame alive, the one flame I wish would have been extinguished swiftly with a kick to the tape deck. I'm referring to heratius gwendolyne from 1978. The other, Hiatus, is a really superb example of the eighties style of RIO jazz-rock in France, like abus and eider.

I urge everyone reading to at least listen to the first chord of the first track of Hiatus (assuming the link has not been deleted yet). Ahhh! it's like a punch to the inside of the cerebral cortex. A bass line ensues, then another big polytonal karate chop. It's like being grabbed by the frontal lobes and then massaged in the auditory processing centres. It's like understanding a university level calculus course in a millisecond. If anyone can explain that chord to me I'd love to hear your analysis. It appears to be polytonality but that's all I can figure out. There is no doubt these songwriters knew stravinsky and there are hints of ravel with the whole tone scales later in the first song (in keeping with title 'bleu outrermer'). I hope I'm not the only one who finds this one of the pleasures of progressive, the musical education that springs from these tracks. Things continue along the same vein, 50-50 mix of jazz, RIO, there is enough familiar here to pull us back from frustration with the constant contrived inventiveness. Not the usual jumpy RIO style that gives you torticollis after too long a listen, enough buttery harmony to keep the sauce from separating. The cover is truly a homophobe's nightmare, I don't recommend anyone check it out this time. On the other hand the cover is in my opinion the best part about Heratius.

Addendum-- to the guy(s) who are deleting the rare album links: I promise I will stop sharing these rarities very soon

Gwendolyne electrochoc...
Bleu outremer...

9 comments:

Tristan Stefan said...

heratius
http://sharebee.com/76f30304
hiatus
http://sharebee.com/189a3314

Unknown said...

looking for hiatus such a lobg time!A million thanks!

Unknown said...

sorry but it seems the links do not work at least for me...anyone else having the same problem?

Anonymous said...

this time http://sharebee.com/ is down, otherwise all ok.

isabelbc said...

hi apps,

same here, the site Sharebee is offline, maybe for maintenance...
we must be patient ;p

Isabel :o)

Tristan Stefan said...

http://flameupload.com/files/X5VWXLFV/Hiatus_-_Avant_Demain_84.rar

hope that works

Tristan Stefan said...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0FDFQTNF

Tristan Stefan said...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0FDFQTNF

Anonymous said...

Hi Tristan,

i knew the lovable strangeness of the band Heratius, the more experimental of the two. Hiatus is also very good. A bit of classic jazz moods like in 2nd track but the rest of the tracks are generally really avantgardish.

On the chord of Blue Overseas there is a very bit to explain. Our brain is the king of illusions and often creates some effects. If your neurones needs a certain type of sounds on all, they releases an electric discharge every time you meet that sounds spectrum in a disc. On me doesn't that effect. I love more the nocturnal bass and guitar line, with flavour of Sieges Even's Steps album.

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