http://www.ideologic.org Ideologic is the home page for Stephen O'Malley, artist, graphic designer and member of Sunn 0))), Khanate and Lotus Eaters en-gb webmaster@ideologic.org http://backend.userland.com/rss 60 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1867
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http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Morbid-Angel-Blessed-Are-The-Sick-ORIGINAL-MASTER-TAPE_W0QQitemZ160255222445QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item16025522244









]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1865 www.malleusdelic.com

From their site:

SUPERSONIC POSTER SERIE 2008
11th - 13th July
Birmingham (UK)

This is a poster serie based on the "Apocalypse".
The four posters are handprinted and numbered 180 pieces only.
The dramatic of the scenes is multiplied by the red and silver colours on black heavy paper.

Gravetemple represent "the pregnant" with the destruction of the flood in her belly.
Alexander Tucker is the great red dragon coming from the sea
Guapo is the 4 horsemen of apocalypse
Thrones is the prostitute on the beast.

We've worked on the idea of the Apocalypse in a non-religious way, it's been more a oneiric approach to it.
They're the demons living in the human nightmares and the free spirits of creativity.








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]]> Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1861 Caspar Brötzmann
Issue #132 (February '95)
By: Ben Watson

Caspar Brötzmann doesn't take kindly to being called a guitar player ("It's just a tool," he says), but his attack on the instrument - explosive, obstreperous, large scale, textural, timbral - asserts the material facts of string-pickup-amplifier more bluntly than anyone else currently involved in rock. Sonic Youth, Helmet, Pigface - they're all clamouring for his attention. How does he sound? Blocks of sound unleashed in Varesian wraparound battlescapes, instant abstract klangfarben constructions to delight the surviving posses of unrepentant modernists (warming themselves round bonfires made of Joe Satriani albums): guitar improvisation as sonic weight and filigree counterbalance. No wonder people are saying that there's been nothing like it in guitar music since Jimi Hendrix.

Those who champion the sampler over the guitar as the preeminent noise-machine for aural postmodernism - cybernetic, androgynous, cool, untouchable - conveniently omit its technical dependence on the most restrictive device of classical instrumentation: the keyboard. Sampling so frequently returns its users to Grade Five piano banality (witness the inanities at the softboiled end of Ambient - try Orbital's Snivilization), that it seems more logical to cast it as an agent of control, a hangover from history, rather than a gateway to new musical possibilities.

Brötzmann's self-taught guitar-man physicality breaks through to sounds unheard of in the sampled universe. With the right digits in command, the guitar's analogue capacity, its microtonal penetrations, rubbish the air-brushed niceties of sounds tethered to the tempered scale. Notoriously a man of few words, he often says that everything is "simple" - but this is the kind of simplicity that upsets applecarts, jiggers the smooth flow of stockmarket figures reflected in the requisite mirrorshades, asks questions about the emperor's clothes. Brötzmann's Neo-primitivism seem poised to give pop/rock just the jolt it needs.

Caspar Brötzmann was born in 1962, and brought up in Kreuzberg, an area of West Berlin by the Wall that was colonized by rebels and squatters; the bohemian left galvanized by the struggles of 1968 (though currently - especially with reunification - it is succumbing to respectability and bourgeois order). Brought up by a flute-playing mother (along with a sister), he likes to downplay any influence from his (frequently absent) father, Peter Brötzmann, German's one-man free jazz saxophone revolution. But he does acknowledge the liberating influence of the bohemian milieu he grew up in.

"When I was little, three or four years old, black and white people were sitting on the kitchen table, crazy people, drunk and whatever, sleeping on tables when I woke up in the morning. I was brought up in this kind of atmosphere - and this was my home. When I was 14 years old I started to play my own way on guitar. I found this old guitar belonging to a friend of [jazz composer] Carla Bley and I started to play. It was in the next second clear to me that this was my thing. I already knew then what I wanted - it was forward, straight ahead, to find a way to play."

Brötzmann's power trio Massaker was formed with bassist Eduardo 'Elk' Lopez, of mixed Spanish/German parentage, and drummer Danny Arnold Lommen, whose family comes from Egypt and who lives in Amsterdam. Massaker have released five albums, inspiring rapid worship and confusion in equal measure. It is evident from the records and the gigs that Massaker is a band. Brötzmann's guitar evokes split-second responses from Lommen that could only come from spontaneous interaction, though sectional planning and portentous, doomy riffs indicate Massaker's origins in the same scene that gave birth to Berlin cult groups Deutsche Amerikanische Freeundschaft and Einstürzende Neubauten. Massacre (the English translation of the band's name; Caspar threatens jokingly to terminate the interview when I point out that the German pronunciation sounds to English ears more like a particular Greek dish) was also the name of a ground-breaking record made by Fred Frith, Bill Laswell and Fred Maher in New York in the early 80s, when No Wave musicians sought to trash the dividing line between punk assault and free jazz outreach.

Like many artists, Brötzmann is loath to locate himself in any tradition or movement outside his immediate circle of friends and collaborators (which include Conny Plank, the legendary German producer, Diamanda Galas and Jim 'Foetus' Thirwell). Although people have mentioned the name of New York free jazz rock guitarist Rudolph Grey to him, he hasn't checked him out, nor has he heard of Stefan Jaworzyn and Ascension, London's own apocalyptic electric guitar reinventors. Still, he is amenable to the idea that such parallel reactions against the academic tweedles of post-Metheny jazz and 'Heavy Metal' guitar reinforce the logic of his aesthetic rather than render it otiose, calling them "maybe unknown friends".

In a pop scene still reeling from House's discovery of the sampler - the virtual worlds of Ambient and Techno - Brötzmann's insistence on active musicianship has the pleasing scent of heresy. Although there is a long tradition of progressive Luddism in rock (skiffle's broom-basses and washboards originally allowed Trad Jazz to outflank Modern Jazz creating the Blues Boom, R&B and Rock-as-we-know-it), that is not really where Brötzmann stands. He says he is pleased that on his recordings, "you can hear that people are playing live: sometimes I feel like I'm doing an 'old-fashioned' thing, though really that makes no sense because this is the time of the world." In an important technical sense, Brötzmann is no Luddite: his is pioneering a pristine palette of original guitar sounds, while the albums, in common with state-of-the-art films like Amateur and Natural Born Killers, use the breathless eroticism and drama of the latest digital recording technology - knocks and scrapes recorded with such immediacy the effect is visceral, a surrealism of documentary intensity.

Brötzmann appears to have arrived from nowhere, but has he really? He laughs when I ask if he is a 'Grufti' (literally 'dweller in crypts', a Berlin term for the city's Goth-inflected punk rockers), and replies, "Do I look like a Grufti? A Dracula, maybe." The cover of his latest release Home will be familiar to anyone who has seen the paintings of A R Penck, Georg Baselitz or other early 80s German artists characterised as 'Die Neuen Wilden' (Neo-Primitive) for their embrace of the tribal, the irrational and the shamanic. Brötzmann's image of a deer is rendered cave painting style. Song titles ("The Tribe", "Hunter Song") confirm such allegiances. As with his music, though, Brötzmann is loath to acknowledge the influence of external ideas. Paradoxically, his rhetoric is sheer Neo-Primitivism: 'instinct' is more important than knowledge of artistic currents.

"I started painting for a second record, Black Axis. The recording was finished in the studio, we needed a cover and I started painting - five and a half years ago, I was painting animals." His father started out as a painter, but turned to the saxophone out of disgust with the art market, and its provision of commodities for speculation by the rich (to this day Peter Brötzmann supplies some of the best album covers to be seen in the racks). Interested in finding out what ideological current had inspired him to think of painting, I ask Caspar if he knows any painters in Berlin.

"I'm not interested in that," he replies curtly. "For me, it's a lot of fun to paint, if I have time to sit somewhere. For example, for the cover of Home I had five days holiday in Milan, I was sitting down with a balcony, a big sea-board in front of me, mountains, it was really hot - I was painting. For me, it's the same as playing guitar, just like that. I really have fun. If it's no fun I don't do it - sometimes musicians invite me to go in the studio to play this solo for this and I can earn this money - but if there is no feeling for myself, I don't do that. That's what I mean, that I take care of my own quality and my friends. What I've learned from these 500 interviews is to bring all words on a point that I am doing - it's about that I take care of my work, my friends, my friends and my work. It's really important to have friends in your life. It's totally simple, that's why all the time I am saying that I am just a musician. I can make interviews with really big words in a newspaper but I don't. I like small words."

Caspar is currently signed to the Blast First label; unsurprisingly, the label's owner, Paul Smith, applauds the guitarist's 'primitivism'.

"The critics' take on Caspar is interesting, they're so trying to put a square peg in a round hole. He's never heard of anyone, and he's also not the slightest bit interested and that interests me. I told him Philip Glass was coming to see him in New York and I was saying to Caspar, you know, Philip Glass, you'll have heard of Philip Glass, and he was saying, 'No' - and he's also not interested in knowing who Philip Glass is and I find that really interesting!"

The inspiring paradox is that Brötzmann's naivety - his belief in intuition, in playing live, in releasing what is played without studio manipulation - has had such a complex and stunned reception in the rock press. "Biba Kopf called me a noisy bastard," he says. "In America they call me the 'demon decibel'." Of course, the constrained world of rock-pop has never heard (of) Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, Derek Bailey, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Joe Morris, Rudolph Grey, Stefan Jaworzyn or Billy Jenkins, which no doubt explains why Brötzmann has been described as "gargantuan noise assault" (Music From The Empty Quarter), "mega-noise" (Select), "harrowing" (Vox). Actually, he plays soaring psychedelic guitar full of iridescent colours and dramatic gear-changes. Home, it is true, works towards a slightly portentous (Grufti?) Industrial thump that shows connections to Berlin's infatuation with Bauhaus and Cabaret Voltaire - but Merry Christmas, an improvised duet album with FM 'Mufti' Einheit from Einstürzende Neubauten that was released by Blast First at the end of last year, is a triumphant bouquet of incandescent guitar sounds in the tradition of Bailey versus Bennink, Zappa versus Wackermann, and Jenkins versus Noble. Also, the recording is exemplary, which gives Brötzmann even more of an edge.

But Brötzmann bridles at such relegation to the guitar pantheon, however illustrious.

"In the end, though, I am not a guitar player - I work for the atmosphere. I use my guitar as a tool - just as a tool to say what I have to say. It could be a piano or a trumpet, I don't care. The instrument is not important - what is important is whether you have something to say or not, a way to bring out what you feel, what you think, what you're angry about. That's why I always say I'm not a guitar player."

Merry Christmas begins and ends with tracks called "Panzerketten" (which translates as "Tank Convoys"). There's a tank pictured on the cover and the finish is gun-metal grey. There's also a track called "Solingen", the name of the German town where racists fire-bombed an immigrant hostel and killed four people. Brötzmann is wary of taking to the political soap-box.

"It's not a big thing. On Merry Christmas I was making the cover and all the titles, "Solingen" was just - you have to excuse my English, it's not so perfect - look this has happened. Just a kind of give-hands-to-the-families, if you can buy this record, there is the word, "Solingen". It's a very simple way, it's not a very theoretic thing - just to give something, that's all. But in the end, I really mean: to listen to this kind of music you don't need titles. If you listen to the music, you know. Especially for Solingen. I can look at all these bad things that are going on, you look at the world, all these bad things from South Africa to Yugoslavia or whatever - to play, to say 'no' in your music to all these bad things, that's what I do. To give my feeling a kind of way, the emotions."

Despite Brötzmann's limited English, he seems to have found the words to describe militant music that is political in its very texture - dub, early PiL, Revolutionary Dub Warriors - rather than in well-meaning lyrics added as afterthought icing. Perhaps it is better this way, as Brötzmann's verbal politics tend to be limited to the kind of pious wishes that feature daily in any liberal newspaper:

"All I can say is that I try to find a kind of freedom that means that the next day I can say, I was doing my best - making music talk. Freedom - I'm not a person who is going on the street and shooting down someone else because he is bad; if I read a newspaper and see what's going on in the world, all these wars, it's so stupid, so silly - what can you do? You can play - that's my turn, I can play what I think. This is my answer to all these problems, to what's going onŠ"

I tell him that whatever my sense of the limitations of art as a political tool, I am glad that he makes music.

"But it's not easy. But I was so young and found a kind of work, that I knew I really wanted, that was a lot of help. It's a lot of help to have something straight in your life. It makes a lot of things easy, but it makes a lot of things heavy too. It was straight ahead."

Blast First have flown Brötzmann over to London from New York especially for this interview, but he lets drop that, for him, the exercise has little point.

"I did millions of interviews over the last year and a half in America, in England and in Germany. Lots of the time the question is, music is a language - I'm just a musician, that's all. If you really try to explain music in wordsŠ It makes more sense just to play music. All the time I'm saying the same thing in my life, all the time I'm trying to find a way, a kind of freedom in my music and people who are working with words are trying to do the same, different expressions or whatever."

"It's my own way to follow my own vision, to live like a musician. It's heavy enough to live my own life. I don't care if people understand it or not. All these things, how to make music, how to talk about music, it's all not the point - the point is that I can go on stage and play. If I'm on stage, then I can talk - but all these other things, they're not really necessary."

Towards the end of the interview, Caspar impresses on me that he wants me to think deeply about the life experience behind the words, "On stage is where I feel at home".

"If I say in English, for example, that on stage it feels like home, you have to think of what it means - it means that I'm 32 years old, I've been playing for 18 years, I learn one step after another. I've found friends, I know friends, I follow my way - that's the reason one of the records is called Black Axis. I follow my own path, my own vision - I can hear music, I cream music, for example. For me to say that the stage is like a home means a lot. Behind these few words, there's a lot of life behind. To follow your own vision, to follow it through, for a long long time, that makes you a little bit strong. You know what you're doing."

Merry Christmas sold 4000 copies within two and a half weeks, a staggering amount for music that would be equally at home on Derek Bailey's tiny Incus label. Not that Brötzmann is a plutocrat of Sting proportions: his extensive live work lets him pay his rent on his Berlin flat, but he can't live "in luxury". But, in a way, his Neo-Primitivist romanticism, his insistence on the absolute freedom of art, the home he has found on the stage, his disinterest in how his music is disseminated, serves to occlude one of the most inspiring aspects of his art: his spanner-in-the-works function in pop, his (and his record label's) ability to project free jazz into the rock clubs, his unsettling of niche marketing. Neo-Primitivism, in all its tongue-tied 'creative' purity, cannot acknowledge such a wish to épater the commercial order. It means that, for example, Brötzmann's hatred of fascism remains just that - he cannot see how it links in with capitalism's need for a 'radical' movement that will leave property relations intact, how the daily processes of exploitation demand an enemy, a scapegoat, that is not the system itself.

How do you feel about the state of rock, I ask him - "I don't care," comes the reply. Between punk and Grufti, oh what a gulf! The paradox is that Brötzmann's utopian art - like Captain Beefheart's, another rock artist who paints - makes most sense when infiltrating the commercial machinery he disdains to talk about. It means more to listen to Brötzmann's music - and check out his stunned reviews - than to rehearse his art ideology. In these over-conscious, over-ideological, over-theorised times, that's a plus.

© The Wire 2008

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]]> Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1856 Saw the latest incarnation of Boris in San Diego a few nights ago. Michio Kurihara blows my mind. Top guitarist of the highest order. Respect.

]]> Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1855 ]]> Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1854
Originally built in 1949, the Crest has been operating as a neighborhood theatre ever since. Equipped with widescreen capabilities in 1979, it was one of the first theatres in the country to run Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 70mm. Expanded to four auditoriums in 1980, two houses were configured with stadium-style seats and high-backed chairs, and two larger houses were constructed to feature conventional seating and large screens. So successful were "bargain nights" at the Crest that by the late 1980s, it began running discount programming on a permanent basis.

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Gaspard is born on June 12th, 2008.
We're full of love.
All hail Life Metal!!
Cheers,
à plus...

Rodolphe

]]> Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1851
Pandit Pran Nath 12th Anniversary Memorial Tribute

Two Concerts in the MELA Dream House
Friday Evenings, June 20 and 27, 2008, 9 pm

La Monte Young, voice
Marian Zazeela, voice
Jung Hee Choi, voice
Da'ud Constant, voice
Charles Curtis, cello
Jon Catler, fretless sustainer guitar
Naren Budhkar, tabla
The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath from the Just Dreams CD

MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor, between Franklin & White Streets in Tribeca
Friday Evenings, June 20 and 27, 2008, 9 pm
Admission $24. MELA Members, Seniors, Student ID, $18.
Limited seating. Advance reservations recommended.
Info and reservations: 212-219-3019; mail@melafoundation.org

Two Concerts of Evening Ragas in the contemporary Kirana gharana (style) of North Indian Classical Music will be performed by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela with The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in a memorial tribute to Pandit Pran Nath on the 12th anniversary of his passing, Friday Evenings, June 20 and 27 at 9 pm in the MELA Foundation Dream House light environment, 275 Church Street, 3rd Floor. PLEASE NOTE: Dream House is closed for the season; we will reopen in September.

La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela will be accompanied by Jung Hee Choi and Da'ud Constant, voices; Charles Curtis, cello; Jon Catler, fretless sustainer guitar; Naren Budhkar, tabla; and The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath from the Just Dreams CD. The Just Alap ensemble will perform a composition by La Monte Young featuring extended alap sections and sustained vocal and instrumental drones in just intonation over tamburas.

Pandit Pran Nath has said, "Alap is the essence of Raga. When the drut [faster tempo] begins, the Raga is finished." With The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, La Monte Young applies his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form and technique: a pranam (bow) of gratitude in reciprocation for the influence on his music, since the mid-fifties, of the unique, slow, unmetered timeless alap, and for one of the most ancient and evolved vocal traditions extant today. Young and Zazeela premiered this ensemble on August 22, 2002 in a memorial tribute to Ustad Hafizullah Khan, the Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana and son of Pandit Pran Nath’s teacher, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan Sahib.

Pandit Pran Nath virtually introduced the vocal tradition of North Indian classical music to the West in 1970. His 1971 morning performance at Town Hall, New York City, was the first concert of morning ragas to be presented in the U.S. Subsequently, he introduced and elaborated to Western audiences the concept of performing ragas at the proper time of day by scheduling entire series of concerts at special hours. Many students and professional musicians came to him in America to learn about the vast system of raga and to improve their musicianship. In 1972, Pran Nath established his own school in New York City under the direction of his disciples La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music, now a project of MELA Foundation. Over the years Pran Nath performed hundreds of concerts in the west, scores of them in New York City, and in Fall 1993, he inaugurated the MELA Foundation Dream House with three Raga Cycle concerts. He continued to perform here annually during his remaining years and on May 12 and 17, 1996, his two concerts of Afternoon and Evening Ragas in the Dream House were his last public performances before he passed away on June 13, 1996.

Pran Nath's majestic expositions of the slow alap sections of ragas combined with his emphasis on perfect intonation and the clear evocation of mood had a profound impact on Western contemporary composers and performers. Following Young and Zazeela, minimalist music composer Terry Riley became one of his first American disciples. Fourth-world trumpeter Jon Hassell, jazz all‑stars Don Cherry and Lee Konitz, composers Jon Gibson, Yoshimasa Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison and Allaudin Mathieu, Sufi Pir Shabda Kahn, mathematician and composer Christer Hennix, concept artist and violinist Henry Flynt, dancer Simone Forti, and many others took the opportunity to study with the master.

In The Hindustan Times (2003), Shanta Serbjeet Singh wrote:

“[Young and Zazeela] would create works like the “Just Alap Raga Ensemble” which would amaze musicians of the caliber of Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj or the Gundecha brothers were they to hear it. In fact I wish they would hear it and savour their own legacy of Indian classical music in two new ways, one, by way of the Youngs’ immense sadhna and two, by way of the fact that today the great art of Hindustani Shastriya sangeet has actually become so much a part of the world of music. Did not the ancients say: Vasudeva Kumutbhakam—the world is a family? A work like “Just Alap Raga Ensemble” actually proves it.”

In the 2005 article, “TALES OF EXEMPLARY GURU BHAKTI / PRAN NATH, LA MONTE YOUNG AND MARIAN ZAZEELA,” SPIC MACAY (Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth) quarterly magazine "The Eye," it is noted:

“He [Young] is a master of Hindustani classical music. … La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, founders of the MELA Foundation Dream House in New York are responsible for having single-handedly introduced vocal Hindustani classical music to America. In 1970 when they brought renowned master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath of the Kirana Gharana to the U.S. and became his first Western disciples, studying with him for twenty-six years in the traditional gurukula manner of living with the guru, Americans and Westerners only had a nodding acquaintance with Indian music, that too, only instrumental music through the performing tours of Pandit Ravi Shankar. Also some introduction to Indian rhythm techniques through the charismatic playing of Pandit Chatur Lal, the tabla player who always accompanied Ravi Shankar through the sixties. But the deep, unfathomable intricacies of Khayal Gayaki and of the whole cosmos of Alap were totally unknown to them. Indeed, as his many American shishyas, most of them practicing musicians themselves, would say later, even unimaginable. … Young and Zazeela, who taught the Kirana style and performed with Pandit Pran Nath since 1970 in hundreds of concerts in India, Iran, Europe and the United States, have continued their Guru’s work in the most exemplary manner. In June 2002, shortly before he died, Khalifa Hafizullah Khan Sahib, Ustad Wahid Khan Sahib’s son and a great sarangi master, conferred on Young the title of Khan Sahib.”

Concert admission is $24 / $18 MELA members; seniors; students with ID. Limited seating. Advance reservations recommended. For further information and reservations, 212-219-3019, email mail@melafoundation.org or visit www.melafoundation.org.

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THE CONCERTS WILL BE RECORDED AND AIR CONDITIONING WILL NOT BE USED BECAUSE OF THE NOISE IT PRODUCES ON THE RECORDINGS. THE CONCERTS IN THE DREAM HOUSE CAN BE VERY HOT, HUMID AND WITH LITTLE AIR CIRCULATION. PLEASE ATTEND A FUTURE CONCERT IF YOU ARE OVERLY SENSITIVE TO ANY OF THESE CONDITIONS. DRESS APPROPRIATELY FOR THE HEAT AND HUMIDITY.

MELA's programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency and generous contributions from individuals and MELA Members.]]> Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1850
]]> Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.ideologic.org/?news=1849 Friday JUNE 20
7pm-10pm
OPTIC NERVE ARTS


ACHTUNG!

"Entartete Kunts” is a bastardization of the German term “degenerate art” and a snide reference to the 1937 Nazi purging of all art deemed objectionable by "Der Führer." This unfortunate pun seems somehow appropriate for a bunch of drooling degenerates that consistently crank out uncompromising eyesores with seemingly little regard for commercial viability or good taste. As it turns out, the title also insures that many local businesses will refuse to display the flyer or otherwise promote this annual optic apocalypse. Entartete Kunts is in fact a very special exhibition that assembles some of the most devoted artists from around the world for a rare glimpse into a thriving and still largely renegade culture!

SUPPORT REAL UNDERGROUND ART!

Our allies at Optic Nerve Arts have made special arrangements for this exhibit and will not be taking any percentage of final sales from this show! That means if an artist sells their work, the artist keeps all the money! This sort of deal is unheard of in the "art world". So come out for the Opening Reception June 20th and BUY ART! You’ll walk away with a piece of history knowing you did your part to support creative resistance in this age of quiet desperation, soulless conformity, and just plain old boring decency. Which side are you on?

WHO ARE THESE DEGENERATES?

J. Petagno is an icon of unbridled expression! Born under a bad sign in 1948, Petagno has unassumingly created some of the most deeply revered and unmistakable album cover art of our time. From vintage Motorhead and Alice Cooper to Angelcorpse and Thy Infernal, his art never fails to smash the retina like a broadsword to the skull! Petagno's work combusts like a Frazetta painting on methamphetamines and bad acid (not to mention bad politics), each brush stroke forging a strange and grotesque order from the frenzied maelstrom of color. His paintings often possess a mandala-like symmetry that betrays his artistic roots in the heady daze of 60's psychedelia when he created headshop posters and eventually went on to collaborate with acclaimed London art collective Hipgnosis, freelancing for Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Hawkwind, and Led Zeppelin. From blacklight posters to black metal, Joe Petagno's message of unrest has spanned generations and his art has crept into the very sinews of contemporary culture. Entartete Kunts is Joe's first public exhibit since 1979!

Chris Reifert is a legendary psychonaut of sickness! Born in California in 1969, Reifert has been drawn to the black flame of the bizarre seemingly since birth. Raised on monster flicks and horror comics, Reifert descended into the early 80's metal underground and at the age of 17 bashed the drums on Death's ground-breaking debut LP Scream Bloody Gore! Shortly after parting ways with Death in 1987, Reifert formed the cult Bay-area band Autopsy, noted for their fusion of Black Sabbath-inspired doom riffs and thrashing death metal aesthetics. Reifert continues to remain active with Abscess and side-projects Eat My Fuk, Ravenous, and Mirror Snake and increasingly garners attention for his creepy pscilocibin-infested drawings and paintings. Reifert's artwork often depicts strange worlds of anatomical atrocities, impossible architecture, and eyeballs! Lots of eyeballs. "What you see, " he explains, "is what happens when the conscious mind is shut off and the weird world of inner visions is put onto paper or canvas...Who says daydreams and nightmares have to be kept separate?"

Drew Elliott always seemed like such a nice guy. Who would ever suspect that this soft-spoken boy next door would go on to become a serial monster artist and help launch death metal illustration as it is known today?? Emerging during the 80's zine movement, Drew's drawings first appeared in Blatch and Black Market before he earned world-wide underground recognition with album covers for death & thrash acts such as Necrophagia, Blood Feast, Hellion, Indestroy, Post Mortem, and Amorphis. Drew provided art for the Metal Blade compilations Speed and Complete Death as well as New Renaissance comps Thrash Metal Attack, Speed Metal Hell, and Satan's Revenge, all highly sought by rabid collectors today. More recently Drew has provided tour shirts for Nachtmystium and SUNN O))). Drew can also do more push ups than you so don't fuck with him.

Rev. Kriss Hades is a psychedelic black metal surrealist hailing from Melbourne, Australia. Widely regarded for his extreme electric guitar work for pioneering death metal act Sadistik Exekution, his visionary creations range from cyber-surrealist images to transgressive religious art and realms of otherworldly science fiction. Currently operating as a solo noise artist, his mesmerizing live multi-media performances combine abstract and unrelenting virtuoso electric guitar with nightmare film images and animations of his unique artwork. Hail the harbinger of chaos!

Conny Cobra is the finest German export since Doro Pesch and Destruction! Born in 1976 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany on Valentine´s Day, Conny apprenticed at a newspaper printing shop before graduating from Dresden Art Academy with a major in painting, drawing, and mixed media. After realizing that "most artists at academies suck", Conny converted a dilapidated butcher shop into an art studio and on June 6th, 2006 launched her very own underground art gallery Knark-Art! Alternately brutal and sensual, Conny's work is characterized by an abstract occult sensibility and raw black line work. She continues to roam the land like a full-metal valkyrie with no time, no money, a billion ideas, and a burning soul!

Manuel Tinnemans takes the high road to Armageddon. This Dutch artist's meticulous compositions are infused with alchemical symmetry, understated grace, and moody stained-glass textures. There is a transcendent quality to Manuel's best work that would be almost ecclesial if not for its primal death-curse aesthetics. He has created art for Pentacle, Necrophagia, Sauron, Horrible Eyes, Urfaust, Fluisterwoud, and Galgeras. Not content to sit silently at a drawing table, Manuel also provides the ultra low-end bass bludgeoning and throat for Bunkur and organizes the Ashes to Ashes...Doom to Dust festival. He also designed the spectacular logo for this year's Entartete Kunts exhibit!

Nor Prego is Spain's undisputed king of the undead! Born too late in 1977, Nor hails from A Coruña and cites John Buscema, Simon Bisely, and Robert Crumb as principle early influences. He has created album covers for Machetazo, Looking For An Answer, Brody's Militia, and W.T.N. as well as label art for Living Dead Society records. Since 2003 Nor has earned his keep with a tattoo gun, branding his muscular designs upon that tastiest of all mediums: human flesh! "Tattooing," the artist states, "strikes me every day and opens up new possibilities and is now a part of my life!" Nor continues to draw inspiration from pre-1989 horror movies, comics, music, and his close friends. As well as his enemies. Whom he shall soon see driven before him and hear the lamentations of their women. Long live the black ink!

Glenn Smith is an Australian art mercenary existing in a realm where comic art, poster art, and fine art collide. A self publisher, curator, and creator of wildly imaginative images, "Glenno" is most comfortable paying the rent by employing his remarkable illustration skills for such underground ear-grinders as Conquest for Death, Agents of Abhorrence, Pod People, Blood Duster, and Captain Cleanoff. His illustrations regularly appear in magazines such as Australia's Unbelievably Bad and he also masterminds the hilarious black metal parody project, Necrotardation. His work in this year's Entartete Kunts exhibit includes a stunning tribute to Roky Erikson and the 13th Floor Elevators!

Strephon Taylor first unleashed his morbid proclivities upon an unsuspecting world as the beer swilling, devil worshipping teen singer for cult 80's thrash brigade Sacrilege B.C.! He recorded two LP's and pulled off tours of both the U.S. and Europe before the band went down in a firestorm of denim, dope, and brimstone. Since the late 80's Strephon has stepped away from the wreckage of underground music and into his true creative depths as an inspired graphic artist, working on Wacky Packages and Silly Cd's and launching his own line of t-shirts called November Fire. Strephon continues to command painstakingly detailed watercolor canvases that seem to curse, moan, and howl for the viewer's undivided attention. With burly brushstrokes and a mortician's wit he creates swirling claustrophobic masterpieces of the macabre that resemble nothing so much as tortured delirium tremens frozen in amber and indigo. Dropping acid in the graveyard never looked this good!

T. Ketola is an occultnik artist and freelance designer hailing from Finland and currently residing in Italy. Born in 1975, Ketola has been creating underground iconography since the early 1990's including collaborations with Dismember, Watain, Kaamos, Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist, Dead Congregation and Teitanblood. He is also credited with designing Dissection's amazing death-head-on-wings insignia. A former zine editor and self-publisher, Ketola is currently focusing on book design and traditional woodcarving. His illustrations have recently graced the cover and interior of Thomas Karlsson's Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic, released in the U.S. by Ajna Bound Publiciations.

Joseph A. Smith unknowingly earned his place in metal history when a 17 year old Swedish boy name Tomas Forsberg swiped his goat illustration for the very first Bathory LP cover! That image, one of many spectacular and hugely influential works Joe provided for Erica Jong's coffeetable grimoire Witches, has since appeared on more denim & leather jackets than nearly any other heavy metal motif. He hardly needed the attention. Joseph A. Smith was born in 1938 and after graduating from Pratt Institute with Dean's medal in 1958 he has enjoyed twenty one solo exhibitions and has been included in over one hundred group exhibitions throughout the United States. His illustration work has appeared in the pages of Time, Newsweek, and Harpers and is represented in public collections in the U.S., Germany, Cypress, Japan and Mexico. He authored The Pen & Ink Book, wrote & illustrated the Circus Train, as well as some 50 children's books! Since 1961 Joe has been employed at Pratt Institute as Professor of Fine Art and he intends to remain so "until they decide to bury me on the campus."

French is the somewhat misleading moniker of this prolific young art shredder hailing from Aldershot, U.K.! Widely exhibited throughout the world, French's sharp style combines impeccable penmanship, imaginative (de)composition, and flights of surreal gore-splattered fancy. Inspired by war, darkness, gross anatomy, nature, skateboarding, and heavy metal, he has created a massive body of work and a small intestine's length of high rolling clients including Vans Footwear, Century Media Records, Virgin Music, Zero Skateboards, and Portland's own monolithic Nike. French's detailed designs draw a thin line between mainstream cool and underground nausea, full of tongue-in-cheek wit but stopping short of lazy hipster irony. Death hasn't looked this fun in a long time!

Musta Aurinko is a self-styled occultist, explorer of the unknown, and gazer beyond the veil of Maya! Seemingly conjuring atavistic impulses and esoteric phenomena with each new work of art, Musta attempts to give proper form to the formless, to bring vision to the void. Since her early childhood in Moscow she has recognized her innate magical sensitivities as "both a gift and a curse", invoking the Black Sun and forging past mere metaphorical work toward the essential path of liberation. Her heavily shaded drawings recall the satanic splendor of Rosaleen Norton and she similarly bridges worlds in an effort to transcend the bounds of this earthly sphere. Musta's illustrations, symbols, and logos have graced black metal, dark ambient, and experimental electronic projects including Black Seas of Infinity and Blackdeath. Entartete Kunts is Musta Aurinko's first international exhibition.

Paul "Unhinged" McCarroll is a Belfast born artist and din-merchant residing in sunny Northern Ireland, casting his spurious scrawls upon the extreme music underworld from his hermetic cell. A variety of mediums and styles have been inflicted on such luminaries as Regurgitate, Primordial, The Exploited, Adorior and many more including his own dank outsider-metal machine Scald. Digital painting is now the favored expression of contempt, with wounds undressed and entrails lovingly arranged, Paul chuckles at blasphemy and peels another scab from the mask of humanity.

Bobby BeauSoleil was born under the sign of the scorpion in 1947 in Santa Barbara, California. Roughly translated, Beausoleil means "Beautiful Sun" and Bobby has seized this meaning in more recent years by capitalizing the 'S' for emphasis. The name itself betrays certain artistic and spiritual coordinates. It has also inherited a stinging irony. Bobby is a convicted murderer and has been in prison since his arrest in 1969 following a drug deal gone horribly wrong. As a teen runaway and free-booting musician during the late 60's Bobby frequently jammed with Charles Manson and often visited his commune at Spahn Ranch in Death Valley. This was a relationship he would soon regret. While he sat in Los Angeles County jail on one count of murder in the first degree, several members of Charles Manson's "family" invaded two wealthy homes in the Hollywood Hills and effectively decimated the already strained hopes of the Aquarian youth movement. The brutal massacre that unfolded those dark nights in 1969 and the inflammatory graffiti scrawled across the Tate-LaBianca households would forever associate BeauSoleil with the enduring hysteria of the Manson mythos. It is an association that has cast a dark pall over his otherwise peaceful life and prodigious creative achievements. Remarkably, nearly 40 years in prison have neither stripped his humanity nor contained his spirit. Bobby is a living embodiment of Milton's Bringer of Light and a Luciferian force of the will triumphant. An artist, musician, husband, father, and friend, Bobby's contributions to Entartete Kunts were created within the confines of prison and are clearly the residue of deeply personal erotic imaginings and whimsical reflections of life beyond razor wire.

Dennis Dread is a ballpoint necro-wizard and spends his evenings hunched over a drawing table in a moldy basement, howling at the moon and raising the dead! Born at home in 1972 in New York's folklore-rich Hudson River Valley, near influential historical locales such as Sing Sing Prison and Sleepy Hollow, he enjoyed a childhood of monster movies and home-made comic books and at the age of 18 began silkscreen printing for the infamous terrorist t-shirt company Mutilation Graphics. At some point during a stint of booze-fueled travels, Dread jumped off a freight train passing through Portland, Oregon and the "city of roses" has served as his headquarters ever since. Dread's visceral and obsessively detailed ballpoint pen drawings regularly appear in zines and on metal and punk records, including work for such extreme-noise luminaries as Abscess, Darkthrone, Abigail, Phobia, and Engorged. Dread edits and self-publishes the long running underground art magazine Destroying Angels and is the curator of Entartete Kunts! Buy him a beer and wish him luck…



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