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AMAZING SOUNDS
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No. 83
October 31, 1999
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THE CD "ENERGY" BY MC2 IS AVAILABLE IN THE VIRTUAL RECORD STORE
OF AMAZING SOUNDS:

http://www.amazings.com/mailorder.html

YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE RECORDINGS RELEASED BY AT-
MOOSS RECORDS HERE (OFFICIAL WEB):

http://www.arrakis.es/~at-mooss

====================
CONTENTS:

NEWS

THE ONEIRIC PROSPECTIONS OF PETER FROHMADER
Peter Frohmader has released about twenty albums, made music for
television movies and documentaries, and composed soundtracks for
some of the films by Swiss videoartist and a fellow painter H.R.
Giger, well known as the creator of the background stage art in
the film "Alien" who was awarded an Oscar.

REVIEWS:
PROGRAM@: "ASHES" At-Mooss Records
SERGIO KOVAL: "CLON" Icono Records
SERGIO KOVAL: "WORKS '95 - '98"
Sampler: "SYNTONIC WAVES VOL. 7" Spheric Music
PATRICK KOSMOS: "TRANCE NEUTRAL ZONE"

====================

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NEWS

NEW RELEASES / RE-RELEASES / DISTRIBUTIONS
(For more information and sound clips, use the links)

"Live In Paris & Toronto" by Loreena McKennitt
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000JWMI/thesciencebookbo

"Bolivian Blues Bar" by Alex De Grassi
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZSU4/thesciencebookbo

"Entwined And Entranced" by Govinda
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000028TV2/thesciencebookbo

"Otherworld" by Lunasa
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZSTG/thesciencebookbo

"The Looking Glass" by Paul Cardall
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001R3FQ/thesciencebookbo

====================

Music by Iasos is now available online in the Liquid Audio format
at Iasos' official website. On that site, his music is available
for listening in these 3 formats: RealAudio (streaming), MP3
(downloading) and Liquid Audio (streaming).

http://iasos.com/audioclp/

You can download the free Liquid Audio Player, for Mac or PC, at:

http://www.liquidaudio.com/downloads/liqplayer/index.html

(This Liquid Audio Player not only streams the music, but you also
get to see the album cover, artist photo, and miscellaneous Liner
Notes.

====================

THE ONEIRIC PROSPECTIONS OF PETER FROHMADER
(By Jorge Munnshe)

Art is said to be multidisciplinary. German artist Peter
Frohmader appears to confirm this as he successfully works in two
terrains: Music and Painting. In both fields, his artistic
creativity has always been aimed at metaphysical, esoteric, cosmic
concepts. As a composer, he has released about twenty albums under
labels from Germany, Sweden and the United States. He has made
music for television movies and documentaries, and composed
soundtracks for some of the films by Swiss videoartist and a
fellow painter H.R. Giger, well known as the creator of the
background stage art in the film "Alien" who was awarded an Oscar.
Precisely, Giger has on occasion claimed that he would have liked
Frohmader to have composed the soundtrack for this movie. As a
painter, his paintings are displayed at important exhibitions of
fantasy art, and he makes commercial illustrations, such as book
and record covers, postcards, and even posters; besides, of
course, the covers for his own music albums. He sometimes combines
painting and music in his video productions.
Although he has fans in numerous countries, he continues to be
one of these characters who exist in the shadows, only known by
few people. He is an honest artist who has always preferred the
integrity of his art to commercial success.

ARTISTIC TRAJECTORY AND IDENTITY
Peter Frohmader was born in the German city of Munich on May
9, 1958. His artistic vocation is the first one in his family, who
have never supported him. They don't like what he does, and
furthermore, they consider he earns little money. When he was a
child, he felt a great interest in producing all kinds of sounds
with different objects. At about age 11 or 12 he began to record
his sound experiments on tape and manipulate the recordings. Also
from an early age interested in painting, he studied art and
graphic design, graduating in these. During his teenage years, and
throughout the 1970s, he founded several avantgarde or alternative
music bands. At the end of this period, he performed live in
Germany and Austria, and contacted artists from other countries.
In 1979 he started to record what would become his first solo LP
album. The LP, called "Nekropolis", appeared in 1981. Since then,
his cadence in album releases has been more or less annual. These
are in actual fact sonic-visual works, as he paints one or several
paintings for each album.
His musical compositions have been said to be the musical
shaping of the artistic works by Giger, specially those used for
"Alien", what proves the understanding between both artists and
why Giger considers Frohmader to be the perfect composer for the
soundtrack for "Alien". Yet apart from this affinity, the
compositions created by Frohmader are, above all, the musical
equivalent to his paintings, and not only the ones published as
the covers for his albums. Thus for example, his first album,
"Nekropolis", is a symphony divided into two cycles, the one of
the Night and the one of Hell, which contains references to the
devils in the Tibetan paintings. In two pieces of "Nekropolis
Live", texts extracted from the novel by Lovecraft "On the
Mountains of Madness" are recited, together with a poem by
Gottfried Benn about a corpse. His series "Homunculus", which he
has been publishing in Sweden, is a clear connection with his
paintings of evil medieval atmospheres. Or the symphonies "Plague
Dances" and "Malleus Maleficarum", from his double LP "Through
Time & Mystery - Ending". At the same time, his concerts at
cathedrals, both for the music and the place, reflect these
mystic-baroque traits.
One of the first things that attracts the attention most in
his paintings, is the use he makes of black and white to enhance
certain themes or elements. Thus for instance, his landscapes of
narrow medieval streets look like pictures extracted from accursed
books, and his ghostly Gothic cathedrals have an undeniably evil
aura. Looking at some of those black and white elements, as for
example the entire series of "Homunculus", it must be admitted
that in full color they would not be so very impressive. He also
incorporates this technique into photography and even to his own
person, and decides he is one of these elements that must appear
in black and white. Therefore, he always prefers photos to show
him in black and white, instead of color.
Some of his illustrations, as for instance the mass of human
remains that presides the cover of his first album, or the poster
that is included in his second album, show his vincle to death and
Beyond. He sees these universal enigmas as a key for his
creativity.
In a great part of his paintings there reigns a nocturnal
atmosphere, perhaps enhanced by the timetable of his artistic
work; Frohmader has produced his works mostly at night, at least
in the past. And an oneiric texture, nightmarish in nature,
pervades these paintings as well, so as to try harvest some of the
essence of bad dreams, by means of atavistic, ancestral signs,
from terror. The final effect is to reflect the things that each
observer of the painting would swear to have dreamed in some
nocturnal nightmare.
Nevertheless, his work is not as dark as many people believe,
and this is an important point. Frohmader has become famous as an
"accursed artist" because the most remarkable part of his art is
the sinister content, and therefore, this is what is more
popularized. In his music there also are passages of light and
beauty, a sincere message as opposed to the commercial productions
that have appropriated the term "New Age".
In his paintings, he shapes cosmic adventures where the
observer can contemplate lakes and rocks made from light, the
origin of life fused with the birth and death of suns, exuberant
jungles spreading to the horizon, intergalactic starscapes swept
by the cold light of nebulae, or simply the Sun rising from the
clouds and shedding its light after a storm.
Up to a certain point, the dark and light aspects of
Frohmader's art have a chronological distribution throughout his
career. And thus we have that in the first years darkness, the
macabre, the evil dominate; while in his latter years it is light,
beauty, the cosmic, what takes the place of the former. Although
in the mid 1980s, with "The Jules Verne Cycle" (two pieces based
on two stories by Verne: "The Mysterious Island" and "20,000
Leagues Under the Sea"), this subtle change can already be
appreciated, it isn't until 1988 with "Spheres", when Frohmader
leaves the dark regions and makes a cosmic voyage towards the
worlds of light. This new artistic and aesthetic concept continues
in the CD "Miniatures" (1989), whose cover is a painting on the
wave of the German futuristic trends of the 1920s - 1930s; as well
as in 1990, in the CD "Macrocosm" (released in the United States).
The final jump arrives with "3rd Millenium's Choice Vol.1", which
closes the circle, and which in a way means a return to the
original starting point, even though from a different angle. By
the end of 1990, he engages on a trip to the French Brittany, so
as to find artistic inspiration and produce a 20 minute film
showing landscapes and impressions in his personal style,
including music. This music is included in his CD "Armorika",
running time 74 minutes, released at the beginning of 1991. The
result is a very dense, imaginative work, specially in the themes
"Tumulus", "Les Roches du Diable", and "Dolmen". At the beginning
of 1992, his CD "3rd Millennium's Choice Vol.2" is released, a
meditative excursion that enters science-fiction rather than
terror. Later, new, excellent works appear.

COLLABORATIONS, CONTACTS AND INFLUENCES
The relationship between H.R. Giger and Frohmader began when
Giger heard music by Frohmader. He felt fascinated and proposed
him to make the soundtrack for one of his videos. Frohmader
accepted, and from this point a productive relationship between
them both developed. Giger claims that he usually paints listening
to Frohmader's music. On the other hand, Frohmader admits that he
has been influenced in his paintings by Giger.
He is a good friend of Florian Fricke, the alma mater of the
mystic music band Popol Vuh, known for their cosmic music since
the early 1970s, as well as their movie soundtracks for German
movie -maker Werner Herzog at an international level.
Musically speaking, he has collaborated with Ax Genrich from
Guru-Guru, and Christoph Karrer from Amon Düül-2, members from two
legendary bands of German psychedelic music, predecessors to the
New Age movement. In his recordings sometimes collaborate
violinists Stephan Manus and Iva Bittová, Stephan Seithel (Oboe),
Birgit Metzger (vocals), and others. Through Nekropolis Records,
his record label, he has produced CDs from other interesting
alternative musicians, as for instance Andreas Merz and Gerd
Schedel (two electronic experimental composers from Munich), and
Gulaab.
He has worked with the painters of contemporary fantasy art
Ernst Fuchs and Hellmut Neukircht; and he has been in contact with
sculptor Martin Schöneich as well as painters Wolfgang Ohlhäuser
and Elke Wassmann.
Among his influences we find the Gothic horror movies from
silent movies, as for instance the "Nosferatu" by Murnau, besides
the metaphysical science-fiction movies from Russia and Poland,
among them "Solaris" and "Stalker".
As for the writers who have influenced him most, these are:
H.P. Lovecraft (whom he has illustrated), Edgar Allan Poe, Clark
Ashton Smith, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Algernon Blackwood, among
less known ones. Besides Giger, the painters who have influenced
him most are Bosch and Grünewald.

METAPHYSICAL INTERESTS
In my contacts with him, I have been able to ask him about the
themes he bases his art on.
He believes in a life after death. In his opinion, when one
reaches it, the "ghosts", "spirits", or whatever way one chooses
to call them, have little influence on the physical universe
inhabited by the living people; they can only produce some noises
and the like. The phenomenon of poltergeists would be the most
extreme form of such influence.
About the duality between Good and Evil, his philosophy is to
live doing good, following the laws of the positive. His concept
of God is the creative power of the universe. He dislikes the
people who follow the philosophy of black magic. He admits that
mysticism is deep inside him "since I have been able to reason,
since I have been able to feel and think, since my childhood". And
he adds: "I hope I will reach higher evolutive levels after my
death, what we could call "heaven" or "paradise"."
He believes in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent
life, even if he adds he has never seen a UFO. He considers that
the biological shaping of such beings can be very different from
what we can imagine.
In answer to my question about what era, past, present or
future, he would choose if he were born again, he replies that
"Perhaps there is no future time, due to the increasing
destruction of the entire planetary ecosystem".
About his relationship with dreams, he claims: "I dream
paintings, yet I don't usually paint them. What I paint are day
dreams, if you wish to call them so, day dreams in my fantasy.
Nightmares are very interesting and with great strength,
artistically speaking. However, I don't so often paint such
things, at least for now. Some ten years ago, I did. Lately I am
working in other themes, basically what we could call "Magic
Realism", whereas at a technical level now I work a lot with light
effects. Science-fiction has always been a theme for my art, both
in my music and in my paintings, and I have sometimes fusioned it
with historical elements belonging to past eras of humanity, as a
general rule the Middle Ages, the also called
Dark Age".

More information about Peter Frohmader at:

official webpage:

http://www.dbeau-arts.de/Nekropolis/

webpage in Amazing Sounds

http://www.amazings.com/industry/nekrop.html

If you wish to purchase any recordings by him you only have to use
these links:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/artist-glance/thesciencebookbo

Peter Frohmader & Richard Pinhas:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZSVY/thesciencebookbo

Multimood Records Sampler:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000005A41/thesciencebookbo

====================

REVIEWS:

PROGRAM@:
"ASHES"
At-Mooss Records
Program@ return with a peculiar production, after a long period of
silence. Participating in it we find Jose A. Lopez and Jose M.
Ciria. Their music, eminently electronic, makes deep incursions
into Techno, Synth-Pop, Space Sequencer, and New Instrumental
Music. Touches of Electronic Jazz are also present, and even come
to have a leading role in different parts of the release. The nine
pieces included in the album are of a complex conception, yet at
the same time they are easy to listen to. The warm style of both
musicians, and their virtuosity, make of the listening of this
album a complete experience. Although there are some melancholy
parts, the general structure of the work displays an energy that,
not quite becoming euphoria, makes the music very dynamic. Some
themes are slow, but others turn out to have a quite energetic
rhythm. "Ashes" shows that electronic music has not abandoned the
strength that characterized it in the beginning. Also wonderful is
the album cover, which shows a sculpture by Ciria.
JORGE MUNNSHE

If you wish to purchase this recording, ask for more information
to:

sales@...

(The cost is $15.55 or 13.13 euros or 2100 pesetas + these postage
costs: EUROPE: 4.75 euros or $5.63 or 760 pesetas. / AMERICA:
$7.93 or 6.69 euros or 1070 pesetas)

SERGIO KOVAL:
"CLON"
Icono Records
Sergio Koval is an artist with a wide musical vision. This album,
recorded during 1992-94, clearly proves that we are dealing with
an experienced musician with excellent skills, not only as a
performer but also in the creative arena. A wonderful composer of
television soundtracks, Koval provides us with a marvellous
collection of themes that can be framed within a Space Sequencer
style with some Symphonic-Classical elements. The melodies are
usually warm, lively, epic, majestic. Though there are slow parts,
much of the music has a lively rhythm. Although Koval confesses
his having been influenced by Vangelis, Jarre and others, his work
appears to have a well defined style. Here we have a recording, in
short, that no aficionado to these kinds of music should miss in
their collection.
JORGE MUNNSHE

If you wish to purchase this recording, ask for more information
to:

sales@...

(The price and postage costs are the same as for the CD "Ashes",
the first CD reviewed in this newsletter)

SERGIO KOVAL:
"WORKS '95 - '98"
The electronic music by Sergio Koval, experienced and dominating
the technique rather than the contrary, as it sometimes happens
with some artists, already has in this album a clearly
recognisable style, one which surely is highly appreciated by its
multiple followers. Many of the pieces are extracted from TV and
movie soundtracks by him. The Space style present in the album is
melodic and symphonic, often with spectacular orchestrations with
the synthesizers. The melodies are warm, emotive, epic, majestic.
Koval is one of those musicians that know how to transmit best the
belief that electronic instruments not only have a soul but also
possess an expressiveness and a potential which can hardly be
matched. He is able to use the synthesizers in an unusually
intense, vital way, like Vangelis and a few other stars of
electronic music do. In a few words, this is a work that will
enthusiasm the aficionados to Space music in general.
JORGE MUNNSHE

If you wish to purchase this recording, ask for more information
to:

sales@...

(The price and postage costs are the same as for the CD "Ashes",
the first CD reviewed in this newsletter)

Sampler:
"SYNTONIC WAVES VOL. 7"
Spheric Music
The first volume of Syntonic Waves, a series devoted to present
new electronic composers, was released in 1991 by Juergen Kern.
Spheric Music is now continuing the Syntonic Waves series. This
compilation No.7 is featuring some better known artists as well as
a lot of newcomers. This is the contents of the album: UBB:
"Avus", Face in a crowd: "The firth at night", Palantir: "Time
passing", Lions Dreams: "Accept the machine", Space project:
"Nautilus", Tranquility: "Electrographic", Traumklang: "Neutrino",
Transistor: "Chrom", Maurizio Burgarello: "Sign of love", Guenther
Friebis: "Zen", Cars Tone: "It's hope", Heimann & Lambert: "Time
passengers journey". In short, a place where current and future
talents have met, the confirmation that this kind of samplers
serves as a vehicle for innovative ideas.
EDGAR KOGLER

PATRICK KOSMOS:
"TRANCE NEUTRAL ZONE"
Patrick Kosmos presents us a work where rhythm, atmospheres and
melody are very well combined. The basic style includes Synth-Pop,
Space, Trance and Techno traits. Although there are some slow
passages, most of the music has a good rhythm, with a prevalence
of the percussion (supported by the sequencers) in the rhythmic
structures. This is a powerful work, where the artist contributes
his musical talent to achieve a fresh, emotive sonic journey. Some
of the pieces were recorded live on the international Trance &
rave festival in Marbella (Spain).
EDGAR KOGLER

====================

We are preparing an international directory of record companies,
artists, festivals, radio shows, zines, webs, journalists,
associations, and other organizations & people working in the
field of electronic music, Ambient, New Instrumental,
Experimental, World Music, and so on. The inserts are free. The
persons or firms wishing to be included can send us a file of no
more than 600 words with the data they consider as being of
interest (contact addresses - snail mail, telephone number, fax,
email, URL... -) and an explanatory text on their activities in
English) to: amazings@...

We are also preparing an encyclopaedia of composers of electronic
music. The artists wishing to be included can send us a biography
(with a list of works and contact address if they wish to) of no
more than 900 words, in English, to amazings@.... Inserts
are free.

The persons or firms having a page in internet related in some way
to the alternative musics can communicate the URL, as well as a
brief description of its contents, to webmaster@..., and
we will set a link from our web to theirs (The insert of a link in
our web is free whenever it is corresponded with a similar link
from their web to our web)

====================

Our warmest greetings for our readers and until the next edition
of Amazing Sounds.

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