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Tales of Heaven and Hell --ESD 81352
Released Fall 1998
A brooding, dark return to the land of Clockwork Orange, and other truly scary original musical drama in this groundbreaking electronic suite. Rich textures and otherworldly human voices and choruses are combined with large orchestra and multi-synthesizers. (Note: May not suitable for overly impressionable listeners. Use caution when listening alone -- or in the dark.)
Tracks
Liner Notes
Notes on the Music
Credits and Thanks
Hieronymus Bosch's Art
What they're saying about it -- Reviews
Produced by Wendy Carlos
All selections BMI
Liner Notes
(excerpts from the complete notes of the CD set)
It can be fun
to be scared. That's why so many wonderful ghost stories exist,
novels with spooky undertones, paintings and cartoons that bring a
slight shudder, creepy poems, and horror movies that give us
nightmares. Interestingly enough, you won't find very many examples
of scary music. I can think of but a few (and they are only
abstractly frightening): Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain,
Berlioz's Dream of a Witch's Sabbath, or perhaps Liszt's
Mephisto Waltz.
From such thoughts the impulse to produce this album was
born-a wonderful way to get started on a new project. I'd also been
listening to some of my earlier music, like the score to Kubrick's
A Clockwork Orange. Been years since I heard it. Turned out to
be better than I remembered. And it didn't seem too farfetched that a
sequel might fit right in with the other concepts that were
gathering.
Tales of Heaven & Hell is the first result. A lot
of generous friends were essential for completing it with some
panache. My gratitude to you all, truly. While musically it was a
pleasure, the project was technically a real 'bear.' Yet I had so
much fun, I managed to stick with it. It's one of the 'most
different' albums I've ever done. I can hear a few of you groaning
right now to learn that. Others of you may celebrate the zest of
creativity I luckily felt.
Thanks to the newest tools, like Digital Performer, the
results are as free from compromise as any of my albums. It was a
gratifying process polishing the biggest details through tiniest
minutiae, and it means anytime I now hear this music, I get a kick
about the way it fits together.
Many methods of Musique Concrete are used, and these sit cheek
by jowl beside the purely electronic synthesized sounds and effects
(including some vocoder passages!) The
audio tracks contain solo performances, such as live voices. Other
tracks are of live timbral beds, constantly evolving background
textures, and several one-shot effects. It's a wonderful way to work,
once everything is up and running.
The instrumentation now exists to produce any possible timbre,
with any possible tuning, in any possible timing (I like to call
these: 'The Three T's.') I thought we'd arrived at that stage when I
composed Beauty In The Beast a dozen years ago. It has since
grown further into a significantly more powerful capability. Some of
you may be interested in trying out these techniques yourself. But
when you're listening, you ought care very little about them. Does
the music move you? Would you like to hear it again? Would you like
someone else to share in the experience? That's all that ultimately
matters.
I'm particularly happy with the final piece, Seraphim
(nothing else could really follow it). It just seemed to 'put itself
together' without force or pain or angst. Yet it's among the most
beautiful stuff I've been able to cobble together. I do hope you
enjoy both the yin and the yang, and return for more!
Tales of Heaven & Hell needed an
opening which carried us from our usual musical world into the
incognito domain of human good and evil. That's the reason for
Transitional, to 'transit' into a sound space in which the
rest of the CD will evolve. It's also the most whimsical piece here
(gallows humor?), containing widely eclectic musical gestures and
styles. It cycles around each idea while gradually evolving, and we
end up in a very different space from where we started. I tried to
have a bit of fun along the way.
Near the middle you'll also hear some snatches of an
instrument I built years ago with the help of Rachel Elkind and Bob
Moog. It's called the 'Circon' (for
Circular Controller), and it sounds a lot like a Theremin. It's also
very difficult to play, although not nearly as difficult as Leon
Theremin's pioneering instrument. One can play more easily in tune,
and execute more rapid and difficult passages with a fair amount of
accuracy-but you really must practice each passage. You'll hear the
Circon again in the following two pieces.
Once launched into a new musical space, we
encounter HeavenScent, which I wrote as an accessible melody
driven piece. The underlying harmony has a European jazz quality,
with atypical progressions and non-root bass tones.
HeavenScent is also an etude for the Circon, which
provides the main solo voice, once the opening theme has been stated
more conventionally by a piano. I thought the upward sevenths would
be idiomatic with the constant portamento. The somewhat romantic
themes required a full use of human performed vibrato, so natural on
the Circon. It's certainly a contrast to the other MIDI performed
parts of the orchestration.
(Note: get a copy of the actual MIDI file for
this composition, with a lot of helpful information about the Circon.
It's on the Resources page, where you
can read all about the new file
uploads.)
We come to the major work of Tales.
It also was the longest in gestation, taking well over a year to
compose. A great deal of that was due to the shakedown period of some
of the new equipment and software. But the form of such a long piece,
with its dramatic and even melodramatic underpinnings, was also
difficult to get just right.
Clockwork Black reexamines the music I wrote for
Kubrick's memorable film, A Clockwork Orange. (It provided me
with the takeoff I drew on the cover art, too.) Here it supplies the
main themes: quotes from Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen
Mary, snatches of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, a perverted
Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and a phrase or two
of the Latin Requiem plainsong, Dies Irae (where I sneaked it
into the original CO score, too!).
There are a lot of meaty harmonic passages that are enhanced
by the 1/5th c. Meantone Tuning used throughout the work. The 'plot'
of the work conjures very deep, dark stuff, indeed. I wanted to reach
for the underbelly of moods that were implied in the original film,
but exposed in all their horror for the present.
There are suggestions that this might be a Mass, either a
Requiem, or a so-called Black Mass. But such an
impression speaks only about the surface - the work is actually a
musical Fantasia on themes from the filmscore. It contains a
lot of unsavory business, and unwholesomeness in its images and
program. After all, a trip through Hades will contain sadism and
things that go bump in the night.
The ending had to be the way it is. Tears had to be
shed, and the nastiness washed, if not away (there is no happy
ending), at least as a cleansing of those evil events that precede.
Interpretations are left wide open. Listen carefully, especially on
repeated hearings, as there's a lot that goes on in this complex
work.
Note: the full liner notes on this album include the complete texts
for the music.
We are in a different place, a more modern,
technological soundscape, than the primal emotions of the prior work.
This is music of a large, populous city of our own era, or perhaps in
the near future. A novel touch is the use of a 'heartbeat' motive,
both as a natural sounding heartbeat, similar to those in
Clockwork Black, and as a rhythmic figure, that jumps to a raw
jangle.
The main theme marks the first time I've come up with an idea
that absolutely needed the unusual meter of 11/4. I had smiled when I
saw Stravinsky's single bar of 11/4 in The Rite of Spring,
thinking he must have written it with a tongue in cheek smile. Yet
here I use it for many minutes. The scoring is for a fairly full
orchestra, with added synth instruments and effects. Lower strings
begin the work, a meander on the main theme to come. Then the 11
figure begins, and continues underneath, carrying the theme forward.
A repeating pulsing eighths figuration in conventional meter marks a
final restatement, which features a horn section and some dramatic
gestures and effects.
In contrast to the preceding two works, this shortest piece on the CD lightens the drama. It is based on a simple and earnest theme that possesses a romantic, yearning quality. Beneath is an elegant, non-obtrusive accompaniment. After the previous two strongly emotional works, I felt we needed the restraint of Memories, but tried to keep it from being in any way saccharine. The resulting tune to me might best be described as 'bitter-sweet,' a little of both. It's a human and humane oasis in the midst of some of my darkest and most pessimistic compositions.
In some ways Afterlife is more
intellectually frightening than the melodrama of Clockwork Black, as
it takes its own visceral plunge into a different netherworld. There
appear suggestions of ominous sighs and moans, which while sounding
almost human, are synth sounds I invented (including the most
distorted sound I've ever used!) The synth quality only serves to
make them more unnerving to listen to, since something is definitely
askew timbrally.
The structure of Afterlife is most surprising-it's a
rondo. Somehow that sober form provided the glue for several
contrasting sections. Most themes are in 15 note Equal Temperament,
one of the most fascinating and exotic scales around. It's also a
thorny tuning to sing and play in.
That made it amusing to score these themes with an a capella
chorus, later with strings, and then the two together. I thought this
was something that could scarcely be done live, even though it sounds
very much like a live ensemble. Later Johnny Reinhard gave a NYC
performance (during an AFMM MicroFest Concert), and had a live
chorus and some strings play exactly what I'd wryly written-I'll
never say never again...!
The rest of Afterlife uses a curious, ad hoc improvised
scale. By ear I found pitches that had maximum alternation of frisson
and smoothness. The two tunings alternate through the ABACADABA form
of the piece. And with it the contrasting rhythmic and
orchestrational modes shift back and forth from the lowest ebb to
some biting crescendos. The ending seems preordained and abruptly
absolute.
The final work on this CD is also its most
sublime. With all we've been through, this was to me the best way to
complete this musical odyssey. To provide it all with a smoother than
normal euphony, I used my own variation on Werkmeister's Circular
Tuning. I also worked particularly hard to get the performances as
lyrical and expressive as I could make them.
We commence with a cool atmosphere of texture and wind bells.
Then enters the first of two string orchestra passages I couldn't get
out of my head. They had begun life as variations of the main theme
soon to be sung by a men's Gregorian Chant chorus. The first passage
ended up starting Seraphim, the other ended it as a long coda.
Our main theme is sung twice by the men's voices (over sub-vocal
drones); it will appear again near the end. The voices are a
judicious mixture of real singers plus a realistic, flexible bank of
vocal sounds and sample-based patches that I've been building for a
while now.
After a thematic bridge, two central sections follow. The
first is what I had been calling Antique Antiphony, and is
made of a solo verse chant and chorus response form. The text,
printed herein, may suggest Latin, but is actually pseudo-Latinate
scat syllables, I selected for their sound only. The actual text has
no real meaning and leaves open any specific interpretation.
The second middle section is a soft polyphonic passage using
quintal harmonies moving in contrary motion. But that crisp analysis
misses the whole point: this is a veiled and highly impressionistic
passage, that further develops both the antiphony phrases, and the
main theme. It moves as slowly as I dared (as an album, Tales
contains more truly slow music than I've ever written before). I
think it's also very beautiful, and all the subtle complexities only
provide it a painfully elusive quality I like a lot.
Seraphim proceeds to a recapitulation of the main theme
using mixed voices, in a slightly busier setting containing answering
motifs. This is immediately followed by the extended Coda, which
reflects on the past themes, as it gently brings all to a peaceful
'Amen,' then at once vaporizes into the Ether, whence it came.
Credits
and Thanks
Produced
by Wendy Carlos
Rear cover paintings, and 'The Tree Man' - Hieronymus
Bosch (c. 1450-1516)
All other art, cover, and image design - Wendy Carlos
Men's voices -
Theatrivox:
Jeffrey Johnson
Stephen Rosser
John Olund
Gregory Purnhagen
Solo chants & vocal efx -
Jeffrey Johnson
Vocal efx and crying performance - Ann Feldman
Live musical instrument efx performances - Tom O'Horgan
Vocal samples & production assistance - Mattthew Davidson
Album concept ideas &
inspiration - George Petros
Music & cover art suggestions - Matthew Carlos
CO-based ideas & special raw efx - Chris & Roberta
Hanley
Layout and book design - Drew Miller
Digital Performer, custom versions
& help - Bennett Sykes, Jim Cooper & Mark of the Unicorn
K-150 FS and MidiBoard support - Hal Chamberlin
K2000 equipment and assistance - Chris Martirano, Joe Ierardi
& Young-Chang/Kurzweil
K2000 sampling tutorials and help - Gordon Raphael
Strings and additional original samples - Ken Hiskey & Ilio,
Scott Levitin
Aris MusiCode support - Joe Winograd
Computer equipment - John Romkey, Matthew Davidson, Matthew
Carlos
Other support equipment - John Romkey
© 1998 Serendip. All rights reserved.
Important additional credit note:
As one of those terribly embarrassing things
that we all try to avoid, a "due to circumstances beyond our control"
gaffe was committed in printing the Credits above, and on the initial
pressings of the album. A name of someone who surely deserved credit
was left off. I had it on my original list, penciled in on a sheet of
paper with all the other sheets of notes to assemble into the CD
booklet. It was copied over into the computer, as names got
assembled. How it was left off I know not.
So I wish to make a public apology here
to Rachel Mello, a very gifted and knowledgeable artist whom I
met in April of '97, at the Bach
at the Beacon concert, in fact. She's good
friends with John Romkey (happily his credits were not left off...),
and I can see why: bright, funny, and very talented, yet unassuming
and easy to take. Anyway, Rachel was here as I was just beginning to
sketch out details for my cover for the TH&H project,.
I'd at first just placed the album name,
"Tales of Heaven and Hell", right across the top of the front cover,
with the "T" of Tales lined up as a cross on the top of the church
drawing. Then the size of the text was scaled to fit the space.
Uh-HO. It made for a very small title, hard to read and ineffective
as the name of an album, on the limited space of a CD Book cover.
Also, I'd had trouble lining up and scaling my Clockwork Black
hand-drawn title at the bottom of the cover. Made it bigger than the
album title. Not good.
Rachel Melo went over the thing with me
for hours, along with my nephew, Matthew, and made several pencil
sketches of the whole thing, trying to work out what might be a
better setup. She also helped me to see how the other art elements
ought go for more effective impact on the overall impression of the
cover and other art. I wanted just to set the record straight at last
here, and thank her so much for her kind help (thanks, Rachel!) That
means the above listing ought to include:
Hieronymus
Bosch is a rare artist, one who is perceived today as very modern and
fascinating in ways that during his life (ca. 1450-1516) must have
seemed bizarre, if not diabolic. I don't remember when I first saw
his work, but it certainly was before I was doing my undergraduate
work at Brown. For there in an Art History class, I learned more
about these astonishing paintings. They are far more haunting and
gripping than mere gruesome fantasies, as many had dismissed them
during his lifetime.
There exists a parallel with a much more
recent artist, M. C. Escher, another figure who was underappreciated
during his own life by his peers. Their conservative "snobbery" has
been shown as faulty, for the test of time has shown Escher's work
will outlive those who laughed or subtlely sneered at his often
mathematical structure and ingenious designs. It's the usual price of
being far ahead of one's time, of course.
Bosch is in that category, too. His work
is seen much more empathetically with 20th century and later eyes
than those of the Middle Ages. We can invoke terminology like
"Surrealism" and "Creatures from the Id", to find reference for these
often disturbing imagery. While composing Tales of Heaven and
Hell I experienced a momentary "flash" of recognition, and
remembered several Bosch paintings I'd not seen in several years, as
somehow related to my new album. It seems very appropriate to place
the few we could into the booklet for the album. By now there are a
number of excellent Bosch sites on the Web. One of the best sites
we've found, with lovely scans done by Mark Harden, is called
The Artchive.
The URL is:
<http://www.artchive.com
>, just click on
Bosch's name in the Artist Listing (note the many other great artists
from over a wide span of time, style and location, too.) There are
many Bosch images on this site for those of you yet unexposed to
Bosch's haunting, dour monsters and fantasy creations. Enjoy!
(East Side Digital's Blurb:)
Wendy Carlos - Tales of Heaven & Hell
(ESD 81352 enhanced CD)
Lock the doors and turn off the lights!
Itís the long-awaited new work by Wendy Carlos, Grammy-winning
composer and synthesist, creator of Switched-On Bach and the
electronic score to Stanley Kubrickís A Clockwork Orange.
On TALES, Carlos explores the dark side
with characteristic sonic depth and brilliance. The major piece on
this CD is "Clockwork Black," about which Wendy says;
"...a musical Fantasia on themes from the Clockwork Orange filmscore. It contains a lot of unsavory business in its images and program. After all, a trip through Hell will contain sadism and things that go bump in the night."
Meticulously mastered by Wendy herself in Hi-D sound, this enhanced CD includes additional notes and other material. Rediscover a pioneer in electronic sounds and modern composition.
The newest review is long enough to merit its own page. Take a look at it, written by web-maven and writer, Carol Wright, an editor at New Age Music and Barnes and Noble.com (also take a good look at her fine site, learn about the mistakes often made in CD packages, for starters). You can also read her fine interview with Wendy on the completion of Switched-On Boxed Set, which is when Carol first became aware of "TH&H." She also wrote this witty poem below, not your run-of-the mill way to "review" an album:Track #1: "Transitional"
Just try to scare me, Wendy, dear,
I've had enough of Tesh's cheer.
Film cliches abound and tease
My humor from its gallows ease.
Skeletons clack right through my head
To wheezy old organs and bells for the dead.
Theremins woooo like an envious ghoul
While choirs moan my journey to the land of the doomed.Track #2: "HeavenScent"
We're waltzing through space
With the slimiest ease
If this is "heaven," then
Send me back please
To the land where my feet will stay on safe ground
And my spine won't feel like there's ghosts all around.Track #3: "Clockwork Black"
Halloween's just round the bend
And dare I now gnash teeth and rend
My cloth from utter agony of
"Clockwork Black's" antiphony
Of vocoder voices and whispers of gloom
From sinners whipped to the vilest of doom.
Rossini and Purcell and Beethoven, too,
Add themes to the requiem cauldron's brew
That Carlos has stirred up with meaty harmonics
And meantone tunings that are way beyond us.
Though this track ends with doleful crying
I'm not scared enough, so keep on trying.Track #4: "City of Temptation"
You'd swear there's an orchestra in your room
Paving the way to your personal doom
Through the city of sin, through the jungles of night
While the heartbeat of hell clenches up, extra tight.
Just try to count time with eleven o'er four;
Carlos, you've "got me" -- bring on more gore.Track #5: "Memories"
This bittersweet respite from tasting hell's sting
Is just long enough to breathe, but not sing.Track #6: "Afterlife"
Here are the notes that make your bones ice
As they slip down and slide to hell like a vice
That would squeeze out the 12-note octave's foundation
With 15-tones and forget salvation.
My nails are raw bloody from clutching at notes
That no longer live, so abandon all hope.#7: "Seraphim"
Gregorian choirs and harps do promise
Some rays of hope 'yond "Afterlife's" darkness.
String section and horns almost hearken
To a C major world that most of us liken.
But can you trust that this Latin's "official"
Or Godly enough to be beneficial?
Carlos has made good of her boast
That hers is the scariest album of most,
For hell is not made of skeleton bones,
Ominous thunder, and sinners' moans.
Musically, hell is the icy fears
That steal past the gate of accustomed ears.
Once it was Moog she pushed through the portal,
Now anything's game for this witty immortal.
DAILY DIGITAL OPINION, Volume 2, Issue 111 - 2/8/1999
Edited by J.F. Parnell (<www.spinme.com>)
TODAY'S REVIEWS INCLUDE:
Wendy Carlos:
Tales of Heaven and Hell
- East Side Digital
DESCRIPTION: Cutting-edge classical-influenced electronica
RATING: 10 out of 10
The
classically-trained synthesist who gave us the first-ever classical
LP to go platinum back in 1968 is back with a vengeance. The concept
behind the rich, complex and haunting music on this album is a
musical exploration of good and evil. The longest track "Clockwork
Black" is to be listened to with the lights out. This is horror
music, theremin-like warblings and all. It contains updated versions
of themes from her Clockwork Orange soundtrack, as well as medieval
chants like Dies Irae, the sounds of agitated crowds, thunderclaps,
women sobbing, evil laughter and other sonic representations of Hell.
The Hieronymous Bosch artwork on the cover is definitely there for a
reason.
Other tracks have a jazzy or sinister
major-motion-picture-soundtrack feel to them; not surprising from
someone who scored the movies Clockwork Orange, The
Shining, Tron and several others. The digital sampling and
editing technology of today, which Carlos fully avails herself of,
allows a polished, seamless combination of natural (albeit sampled)
and synthetic sounds. The CD is enhanced, but unlike other enhanced
CDs which contain jumpy MPEG videos or game software, this one
contains all of the original content of Wendy's official web site
(www.wendycarlos.com)
plus HTML links to it on the web. I recommend the latter because some
of the links for navigating the HTML pages on the CD didn't work
properly, and a lot has been added to the on-line web site since. On
the disc or the web you'll find vintage photos of her studios from
the late 60's to the present (check out those shots
from 1967!), pictures of her Siamese cats
(aww...), and illuminating writings on technology, composition and
even copyright issues and other goodies too numerous to mention
here.
-Paul Goldschmidt
DAILY DIGITAL OPINION - ISSN
1096-2085
©
1999 Parnell Communications, Distributed by Spincycle Media,
Inc.
A recent, thoughtful mini-review on
Amazon:
Tales of Heaven &
Hell
Very Nearly a Masterpiece * * * * * (five stars)
Reviewer: Sam Theiner
March 21, 2000
Tales lacks the sheer novelty of all the clangerous tones and tunings of Beauty in the Beast... but I think that's part of the point. This album is a somewhat more homogenous sound-world. Some previous reviewers have mentioned that the music sounds horror-movie cliched... well I think that, too, is part of the point. Carlos likes to plant her tongue firmly in cheek and play with convention in an artistic way -- what's known as satire. Most Americans seem to have 'trouble digesting a serious work that is funny (and vice versa); this sort of thing is natural to Western Europeans, especially the English. As for Wendy's "lyrics," well, the same thing applies. I thought they were hilarious and perfectly set. It might seem negative to review an album simply by refuting previous reviews, so I'll leave by simply saying that this is beautiful, rich music, and is head and shoulders above any other electronic recorded music now being made. "Clockwork Black" is like a fun-house ride through horror-movie drama. "Afterlife" is, as Carlos states, more genuinely scary from an intellectual standpoint. The hair on the back of my neck did, as they say, stand on end. This album is a lighthearted look at evil, or, perhaps more bluntly, serious fun.
Triple album review in:
<http://www.babysue.com>
for Jan. 1999
Wendy Carlos's Clockwork
Orange: Complete Original Score
(CD, East Side Digital,
Classical/electronic),
Sonic Seasonings / Land of the Midnight Sun
(Double CD, East Side Digital,
Ambient/electronic),
Tales of Heaven and Hell
(CD, East Side Digital, Electronic)
Wendy
Carlos is what you might call a true genius in the world of twentieth
century music. She's always been ahead of her time...expanding
boundaries and challenging listeners and herself. Hats off to East
Side Digital for seeing fit to re-release earlier Carlos recordings
as well as her latest work. Wendy's first major claim to fame was a
recording called Switched On Bach, which literally changed the way
the world listened to classical music (it also ended up being the
first platinum classical album EVER). The re-releases of Clockwork
Orange and Sonic Seasonings were remastered by Wendy herself, so you
KNOW they sound dynamite...and both releases include extra tracks
that weren't included on the vinyl releases. You'd think that an
electronic recording from 1972 would sound dated and trite, but this
is definitely not the case with the Clockwork soundtrack. It sounded
futuristic and incredible then, and it sounds just as amazing
now.
From the frightening "Timesteps" right
on through "Country Lane," this represents state-of-the-art
technology in the early seventies. The music has held up well, still
sounding better than most current electronic discs released of late.
Sonic Seasonings was Wendy's foray into ambient music (although at
that time I doubt such a label existed). The music on Seasonings
consists of four lengthy pieces divided up into "Spring," "Summer,"
"Winter," and "Fall." The music captures the essence of the seasons,
with subtle electronics rounding out the sound. The real treat on
this double CD, however, is the last track entitled "Midnight Sun."
Unreleased until now, this hypnotic piece represents Wendy at her
best. Layers upon layers of thick heady tones that sound like you've
died and gone to heaven. But if you
think that her past work overshadows her current endeavors, spinning
Tales of Heaven and Hell will change your mind.
Possibly the most intensely orchestrated
work she has yet to produce, this disc leaves other electronic
musicians in a trail of dust (but then, Wendy always WAS ahead of her
time...). The tunes on this disc sound like the soundtrack to my
worst (and best) nightmares. Ms. Carlos throws so much at the
listener that you can't help but feel overwhelmed...but in a very
good way. Beautiful, frightening, surreal, psychedelic...there aren't
enough adjectives to describe this music. Each tune is meticulously
and painstakingly crafted. There's no telling how much time Wendy
spent creating epics such as "Transitional," "Clockwork Black," or
"Memories." Suffice to say, the lady who is largely responsible for
the entire world of electronic music is still light years ahead of
the rest. Easily one of the best CDs I've ever heard in my life,
Tales is a rich and rewarding trip into unlimitless imagination.
Wendy Carlos is in a category all her own. MIND BOGGLING.
Review in Time and a Word, the
International Music Newsletter, Winter 1998-99:
NEW AGE INSTRUMENTAL / JAZZ / WORLD
BEAT
Wendy Carlos - "Tales of Heaven & Hell"
(East Side Digital )
Best
known for her phenomenal work on the Clockwork Orange
soundtrack, as well as masterworks such as Switched-On Bach
and By Request, electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos is being
given this red carpet reissue treatment by the Minneapolis-based East
Side Digital. With the release of her new CD, Tales of Heaven
& Hell, it's quite obvious that Ms. Carlos has lost none of
her unrivaled ability to keep listeners on the edge of their
seats.
It's been 26 years since the Clockwork
Orange movie and accompanying soundtrack took the music world by
storm. In a fitting tribute to that groundbreaking score, Ms. Carlos
resurrects the movie's spirit on Tales with her ominous homage
entitled "Clockwork Black" -- a track filled with the same gothic
underpinnings that manifested itself throughout the original
Clockwork score.
According to Ms. Carlos, "I wanted to
reach for the underbelly of moods that were implied in the original
film, but exposed in all their horror for the present." Tales of
Heaven & Hell is artistically balanced by some delightfully
optimistic Carlos compositions, which the composer claims are "among
the most beautiful stuff I've been able to cobble together."
Fans of the now historic albums Ms.
Carlos released throughout the late '60's and early '70's will be
elated to hear that ESD has also just reissued her complete
Clockwork Orange score (different from the original motion
picture soundtrack) as well as Sonic Seasonings, an album
highly regarded as one of the first electronic "ambient music"
works.
--Robert Silverstein
Review in the Cleveland Free Times, 12-2-1998:
Wendy Carlos - "Tales of Heaven & Hell"
(East Side Digital 530 North 3rd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55401)
Veteran
Synthesist Wendy Carlos has always had a strong pop sensibility, even
when she was working in a purely classical mode, as on her
groundbreaking Switched-On Bach and The Well-Tempered
Synthesizer. A predilection for soundscape painting has also been
apparent over the decades. These areas of aesthetic concern find a
confluence in Carlos's new release, Tales of Heaven and Hell,
on the relatively obscure independent label, East Side Digital.
Drawing on the dark imagery first evoked
in some of the creepier aspects of Carlos's score for Kubrick's "A
Clockwork Orange", Tales explores the bipolar worlds of
salvation and damnation through imaginative use of current digital
electronic technology. Thematically, Gregorian plainchant, Listian
broodings, and postmodern atonality weave imperceptibly to create an
uneasy but nevertheless fascinating environment.
Occasionally a pop-like rhythm track
fades in and out of view, but rather than branding Tales as "pop
music", this occasional intrusion serves simply to alert the listener
that this is, despite its Bosch-like evocations, a modern-day
creation.
Carlos, in fact, pays tribute to her
seminal Kubrick score in the longest track of the disc, "Clockwork
Black", which far from simply rehashing the original material of
nearly thirty years ago, uses the old music as a springboard for new
and intriguingly evil thoughts.
Admittedly, Tales of Heaven and
Hell is not the sort of music you put on and actively listen to;
its seems best suited to a low-level ambient playback, wherein its
subversion qualities (hollow ringings, disembodied voices,
unidentifiable vocalizations, etc.) can work their scary way into
your awareness through the back door.
--Mark Satola
An Amazon.com CD review
by a music fan in Michigan -- December 11,
1998:
Haunting and sad. This is a new one for me...I am familiar with "Sonic Seasonings," my favorite of all of Wendy's works...but this one is exceptionally moody(Hell, and all!), with beautiful passages as well. it actually creeped me out, which is just what I was hoping for. Put on the headphones, and prepare to be dazzled!!Another triumph for Wendy.I'm so glad her works are getting out on CD!!! Check out Sonic Seasonings!!!
--Reviewed by: Annie, of The Big Room
Another Amazon.com CD review:
Carlos wrote and recorded this atmospheric album for those twentysomethings who feel shunned by the modern corporate music mentality, and she proves once again that she has her own special artistic merits. The epic 18-minute "Clockwork Black" is a sequel to her Clockwork Orange work and maintains an appropriately sinister air, recontextualizing the soundtrack's classical motifs into a more gothic brew. Tales contrasts dramatic crescendos with ambient placidity, ominous themes with more optimistic ones. All manner of sound is brought in--strange Gregorian chants, synthesized orchestrations, subliminal effects, eerily processed voices--all to aurally balance good with evil, shadow with light. For younger listeners weaned on three-minute pop ditties, the intriguing Tales of Heaven and Hell will be challenging listening, but in the end there is much to discover from it.
--Bryan Reesman
Several Listener Reviews:
Wendy Carlos - "Tales of Heaven & Hell"
(East Side Digital 530 North 3rd Street
Minneapolis, MN 55401)
I believe that Carlos' music is an important
part of the future of serious music. Taken as a technological
achievement, Tales of Heaven & Hell is an example of the
best and most subtle electronically generated music.
As pure music, Carlos is developing
themes more completely. The music grows on me with repeated
listenings, as does all fine music. She is right, in the same way
that Frank Zappa put it; it is time to move onward and upward into
the future musical world. This recording shows where that future may
be.
--Jay Singer
<JSingerFam@aol.com>
Wendy Carlos - "Tales of Heaven & Hell"
* * * * * (5 out of 5 stars)
Carlos Raises The Bar Once Again Wendy
Carlos has been setting the standard by which all other electronic
music is judged ever since her first release, Switched On
Bach, in 1968.
More recently "Beauty in the
Beast" (1986) exploded the possibilities of alternate tunings and
showed itself to be years ahead of the rest of the pack. Other
artists have yet to catch up to Carlos' brush-cutting forays.
And now she bursts forth again, this
time utilizing all of her resources -- alternate tunings, digital
orchestrations, real live singers, and of course her own composing
skill. All of her technique is in support of a purpose however: this
is a set of Halloween music to scare the pants off you.
The depth of field, the density of
content, and the uncanny accuracy of her "synthesizing" (you can't
tell real from synthesized) make this a recording to be studied for
years to come. Wendy Carlos, by herself, has become the musical
equivalent of Industrial Light & Magic in the film world.
Is it real, or is it
digital?-
-JR
Carlberg
<rcarlberg@aol.com>
Wendy Carlos - "Tales of Heaven & Hell"
* * * * * (5 out of 5 stars)
Wendy Carlos's Best Work Yet This is
probably Wendy Carlos's most coherent and exciting recording. It
brings together elements that she has been working on since "A
Clockwork Orange"--a richer, more flexible and lifelike
synthesized sound, alternative tunings, using music to explore primal
themes. While in "Beauty in the Beast" and even "Switched on Bach
2000," the composition/musical choices sometimes seemed secondary to
exploring the alternate tunings, here the tunings are clearly in
service to the musical ideas.
And though she pulls on rich and varied
musical styles (a hint of Danny Elfman in the first cut, a whiff of
Enigma in "Clockwork Black," a theme reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's
movie score for "Obsession" in "Afterlife"), this is clearly one
album, with an emotional, musical and dramatic through-line from
first cut to last.
And, unlike many earlier Carlos
compositions that seemed to drop a theme for a new one just when you
were ready for it to be further developed, here themes are fully and
richly developed.
Overall, this is an exciting new work
from an artist who has been a pioneer in synthesized music from
almost the inception, and from a composer whose angular works have
never been played so well before.
--Maxx
<maxx@interaccess.com>