Harun Farocki is dead – Rest in peace!

Renowned German filmmaker and video artist Harun Farocki died on Wednesday at 70-years-old. Galerie Ropac confirmed the artist’s passing to the German magazine Monopol.The gallery has represented Farocki since 2007.

 

Born in 1944 in present day Czechoslovakia, but what was then part of Germany, the artist make over 90 films during his lifetime. He studied at the German Academy of Film and Television from 1966 to 1968, developing a unique documentary style that was deeply critical of the media and ways in which images have shaped contemporary life and ideology.

 

From 1974 to 1984 Harocki served as the editor of Munich-based film journal Filmkritik. He moved to California during the 1990s where he taught at UC Berkeley. Farocki began greater engagement with the art world in the 2000s. He took part in Documenta 12, presenting Deep Play (2007), which broke down footage from the 2006 World Cup, held in Germany, across 12 monitors.

 

He has enjoyed solo museum shows at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, New York’s MoMA, Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, and London’s Tate Modern, among others.

Aside from Galerie Ropac, Farocki is represented by Galerie Barbara Weiss in Berlin and Greene Naftali Gallery in New York.

 

Maybe you want to check out some of his films on the wonderful Arsenevich blog.

Hugh Masekela – Still Grazing

Released to coincide with Hugh Masekela’s autobiography of the same name, “Still Grazing” picks up the Masekela story from Verve’s summary of the best of the MGM albums, “The Lasting Impression of Ooga-Booga”, and runs through the “Uni” and “Blue Thumb” material. The 1966 tracks are from “The Emancipation of Hugh Masekela”, where the trumpeter mixes his florid horn calls and vocals with variations of the boogaloo, township jive, soul-jazz, and in Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Felicidade,” a slight pinch of bossa nova into a hip, brightly colored cuisine that no one else was attempting at the time.

As in the MGM days, Masekela is obliged to cover the hit tunes of the day, although “Up, Up, and Away” has more life and jazz licks than those earlier attempts. 1968’s “The Promise of a Future” was the real commercial breakthrough – thanks to the out-of-the-blue success of the cowbell-beating “Grazing in the Grass,” which improbably rose to the number one slot on Top 40 radio in those enlightened times. That triumphant track would be Masekela’s last trip to the Top 40, whereupon he promptly used the exposure to shine a harsh light on what was going on in his homeland (“Gold”) and America in 1968 (“Mace and Grenades”). The CD then jumps to a percolating, Echoplexed “Languta” from a 1973 session in Lagos, Nigeria, before concluding with a withering account of the South African coal-mining trains (“Stimela”).

The package is given extra credibility by the original producer of these tracks, Stewart Levine, who compiled the album and also wrote a fond set of reminiscences. Many of these premonitions of today’s world music scene have been gone for decades, and it’s good to have at least some of them back in circulation again.   

Tracklist:

1	Child Of The Earth Bass – John CartwrightCongas – Big Black (2)Drums – Chuck CarterPiano – Charlie SmallsProducer – Stewart LevineTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	4:42
2	Ha Lese Le Di Khanna Bass – John CartwrightCongas – Big Black (2)Drums – Chuck CarterPiano – Charlie SmallsProducer – Stewart LevineTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Caiphus Semenya	6:45
3	Felicidade Bass – John CartwrightCongas – Big Black (2)Drums – Chuck CarterPiano – Charlie SmallsProducer – Stewart LevineTrumpet – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius De Moraes	10:12
4	Up, Up, And Away Bass – Henry FranklinDrums – Chuck CarterPiano – Cecil Barnard*Producer – Stewart LevineSaxophone [Tenor] – Al AbreuTrumpet – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Jimmy Webb	5:32
5	Bajabula Bonke (The Healing Song) Bass – Henry FranklinDrums – Chuck CarterPiano – William HendersonProducer – Stewart LevineSaxophone [Soprano] – Al AbreuTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Miriam Makeba	6:29
6	Grazing In The Grass Bass – Henry FranklinDrums – Chuck CarterGuitar – Bruce LanghornePercussion – Unknown ArtistPiano – William HendersonProducer – Stewart LevineSaxophone [Tenor] – Al AbreuTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Harry Elston, Philemon Hou	2:37
7	Gold Bass – Henry FranklinDrums – Chuck CarterGuitar – Arthur AdamsPiano – Bill Henderson*Producer – Stewart LevineTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	4:10
8	Mace And Grenades Bass – Henry FranklinDrums – Chuck CarterGuitar – Arthur AdamsPiano – Bill Henderson*Producer – Stewart LevineSaxophone [Soprano, Tenor] – Al AbreuSaxophone [Tenor] – Wilton FelderTrombone – Wayne HendersonTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	3:54
9	Languta Congas, Flute, Vocals – Nat “Leepuma” Hammond*Congas, Vocals – James Kwaku MortonDrums – Acheampong WelbeckDrums [Talking], Percussion, Vocals – Isaac Asante*Electric Bass, Vocals – Stanley Kwesi Todd*Guitar – Richard Neesai “Jagger” Botchway*Percussion, Vocals – Samuel Nortey*Producer – Stewart LevineTrumpet, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	4:49
10	Been Such A Long Time Congas – James Kwaku MortonCongas, Vocals – Nat “Leepuma” Hammond*Drums – Stix Hooper*Drums [Talking], Percussion, Vocals – Isaac Asante*Electric Bass, Vocals – Stanley Kwesi Todd*Electric Piano – Joe SampleGuitar – Richard Neesai “Jagger” Botchway*Producer – Stewart LevineRattle [Calabash], Bells, Bass Drum – Acheampong WelbeckShekere, Vocals – Samuel Nortey*Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	3:59
11	Stimela (Coaltrain) Congas – James Kwaku MortonCongas, Vocals – Nat “Leepuma” Hammond*Drums – Stix Hooper*Drums [Talking], Percussion, Vocals – Isaac Asante*Electric Bass, Vocals – Stanley Kwesi Todd*Guitar – Richard Neesai “Jagger” Botchway*Piano – Joe SampleProducer – Stewart LevineRattle [Calabash], Bells, Bass Drum – Acheampong WelbeckShekere, Vocals – Samuel Nortey*Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Vocals – Hugh MasekelaWritten-By – Hugh Masekela	6:28

Hugh Masekela – Still Grazing
(192 kbps, front cover included)            

Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause, Ernst Stötzner – Bertolt Brecht: Zeit wird knapp

Experimental composer and director Heiner Goebbels was born in Neustadt, Germany, on August 17, 1952, relocating to the Frankfurt area at age 20 to study music and sociology. He first achieved recognition in 1976 upon premiering a number of works, including “Rote Sonne”, “Circa”, and “Improvisations on Themes by Hanns Eisler”, most performed in conjunction with the “Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester”.

Concurrently, Goebbels also collaborated with Alfred Harth and, beginning in 1982, he served as a member of the longstanding art rock trio Cassiber. He further expanded his growing oeuvre with a series of theatrical, film, and ballet scores, and during the mid-’80s began writing and directing audio plays of his own, seeking his initial inspiration in the texts of Heiner Mueller. His theatrical and musical works have won numerous awards across Europe.

“Bertolt Brecht – Zeit wird knapp” is a collaboration of Heiner Goebbels with Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause and Ernst Stötzner. It was recorded and mixed between August and October 1981 at “Tonstudio Zuckerfabrik” in Stuttgart.Germany. It came with a 16 page text-booklet and was available only at “2001 mailorder”, Frankfurt. The album combines the poetry of Bertolt Brecht with free jazz and free improvisation.

Heiner Goebbels plays piano, cembalo, synthesizer, cello, guitar, bouzuki, bass; Alfred Harth plays saxophone, clarinet and flute; Dagmar Krause and Ernst Stötzner supplied their voices.
 

Tracklisting:

Side A:
1. Tagesanbruch
2. Ich, Bertolt Brecht
3. Schwächen
4. Morgens und abends zu lesen
5. Liebeslied
6. Abbau des Schiffes Oskawa durch die Mannschaft
7. Es lebt eine Gräfin in schwedischem Land
8. Die Vögel warten im Winter vor dem Fenster

Side B:
1. Apfelböck oder Die Lilie auf dem Felde
2. Der Pflaumenbaum
3. Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Wege des Laotse in die Emigration
4. Liedchen aus alter Zeit
5. Sonett
6. Deutsches Lied
7. 1940 (Ich befinde mich auf dem Inselchen Lidingo)
8. Ich, Bertolt Brecht / An die Nachgeborenen / Wer zuhause bleibt, wenn der Kampf beginnt / Adresse des sterbenden Dichters an die Jugend

Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause, Ernst Stötzner – Bertolt Brecht – Zeit wird knapp
(192 kbps, front cover included)

Cornel Campbell – Money (1983)

Perhaps best known for the series of “Gorgon rock” records he cut with legendary producer Bunny Lee, reggae singer Cornel Campbell was born in Jamaica in 1948. As a teen he recorded his first material for Studio One, cutting a series of ska sides both as a solo artist and as one half of a duo with Alan Martin; from 1964 to 1967 Campbell seemingly disappeared from the music business, finally resurfacing as a member of the short-lived rocksteady harmony trio the Uniques. As the decade ended, he helmed the Eternals, scoring a number of Studio One-generated hits including “Queen of the Minstrels” and “Stars,” but in 1971 he again went solo after teaming with Lee, a pairing which spotlighted Campbell’s distinctive falsetto to stunning effect.

Despite earning acclaim for a self-titled LP issued on Trojan two years later, in 1975 he shifted from the lovers rock sensibility of recent efforts to the more explicitly Rastafarian approach of records like “Natty Dread in a Greenwich Farm” and “Natural Fact,” both of which emerged among his biggest hits to date. Later that year, Campbell and Lee also launched “The Gorgon,” a boastful smash which yielded a series of hit sequels.

While 1977’s “The Investigator” heralded a successful return to lovers rock, Campbell’s commercial clout waned in the years to come, and in 1980 he and Lee parted ways; subsequent pairings with producers including Winston Riley, Niney the Observer, and King Tubby failed to re-create the excitement of past sessions. In 2005, his career experienced a renaissance when he joined the German techno-dub team Rhythm & Sound on their single “King in My Empire.” In 2013 he teamed the London-based dub band Soothsayers for the album Nothing Can Stop Us, part of the Strut label’s collaborative series Inspiration Information.                

“Money” was released in 1983, produced by Delroy Wright and Junjo Lawes, recorded and mixed in Channel One.

Tracklist:

You’re My Lady	3:15
Mister D. J.	3:39
Your Love	3:49
Stranger In Love	4:00
Oh Rastaman	3:26
You Need Sympathy	3:56
Don’t Try To Break	3:33
Money	3:05

Cornel Campbell – Money (1983)
(192 kbps, front cover included)

Heiner Goebbels/Alfred Harth – Der durchdrungene Mensch / Indianer fûr Morgen (1981, vinyl rip)

The composer and director Heiner Goebbels (*1952) belongs to the most important exponents of the contemporary music and theatre scene.
Alfred Harth is a German multimedia artist, band leader, musician, and composer who mixes genres in a polystylistic manner.

The duo Goebbels/Harth (1975–1988) , combining German composer, music-theatre director and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels and German composer, multi-media artist and saxophonist Alfred Harth became famous for its adaptation of and departure from European composers, especially Hanns Eisler, implemented in a provocatively fresh manner into structured free improvisations and deploying content from areas beyond music. The duo was nicknamed the “Eisler brothers” by music critic W.Liefland. They later also experimented with different genres and sound collages, including electronic devices. The duo played in many international festivals and concerts in cities as diverse as Tel Aviv, Zagreb, West and East Berlin and South America.

In 1981, Berendt together with the duo produced the LP, “Zeit wird knapp” by including love poems and ballads from Bertold Brecht, for which they recruited vocalists Dagmar Krause and Ernst Stötzner. The duo then artistically shaped the German New Wave music/Neue Deutsche Welle in their style with their LPs “Indianer Fuer Morgen”

The first time I heard the track “Berlin, Q-Damm 12.4.812” with it references to the Berlin squatter movement and the heavy repression I was deeply impressed and moved.

The whole album is a magnificent combination of jazzy and experimental tunes combined with plingity-plong electronics in the Residents style and all blended by the more intellectual fraction of the NDW sounds of Germany at the time of this release. Imagine Residents jamming with Sun Ra while Frieder Butzmann and Pascal Comelade are furiously joining them!

This album was recorded with Alfred Harth, Heiner Goebbels, Annemarie Roelofs, Andreas Boje and Dagmar Krause in August, 1981 in Stuttgart and Kirchberg, produced by Wolfgang Ham. It was released on the “Riskant” label in 1981.

Tracks:
1. Der Stürzende Mensch – 2. Der Lachende Und Der Weinende Mensch – 3. Der Durchdrungene Mensch – 4. Der Reibungslose Mensch – 5. Der Kommunistische Mensch – 6. Der Redende Und Der Schweigende Mensch – 7. Berlin, Q-damm 12.4.81 – 8. Indianer Für Morgen – 9. Dunkle Wolk – 10. Kein Kriegsspielzeug Für Jonathan – 11. Uber Den Selbstmord

Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth – Der durchdrungene Mensch /Indianer für morgen (1981)
(192 kbps, front & back cover included)

Cornel Campbell – Natty Dread In A Greenwich Farm (1975)

Born 1948 in Kingston, Jamaica, Cornel Campbell got his start in the early 1960s at Studio One. In 1967 he became a member of short-lived Uniques. By 1969, Cornel had his own group called the Eternals.

Cornel sings in a falsetto style and made his mark as a lovers rock singer (although he did record a string of rasta hits in the mid 70s). He recorded ‘Stars’ and ‘Queen of the Minstrels’ at Studio One during the late 60s and moved on to Bunny Lee’s studios in 1971. By 1984 their relationship ended and Cornel’s career and output slowed considerably.                   

“Natty Dread in A Greenwich Farm” was produced by Bunny Lee, mixed by King Tubby and backed by the Aggrovators.

Tracklist :
Why Did You Leave Me To Cry
I Am Just A Country Boy
Somebody Has Stolen My Girl
King’s Heart
I Wonder Why
Lost In A Dream
Duke Of Earl
Natural Facts
The Sun
Girl Of My Dreams
Dance In A Greenwich Farm
Natty Dread In A Greenwich Farm

Cornel Campbell – Natty Dread In A Greenwich Farm (1975)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth – Hommage – Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler (1977)

Experimental composer and director Heiner Goebbels was born in Neustadt, Germany, on August 17, 1952, relocating to the Frankfurt area at age 20 to study music and sociology.

He first achieved notoriety in 1976 upon premiering a number of works, including “Rote Sonne,” “Circa,” and “Improvisations on Themes by Hanns Eisler,” most performed in conjunction with the “Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester”. Concurrently, Goebbels also collaborated with Alfred Harth and beginning in 1982, he served as a member of the longstanding art rock trio “Cassiber”.

He further expanded his growing oeuvre with a series of theatrical, film, and ballet scores and during the mid-’80s began writing and directing audio plays of his own, seeking his initial inspiration in the texts of Heiner Mueller. Beginning in 1988, Goebbels also turned to authoring chamber music with the Ensemble Modern, and in 1994 completed “Surrogate Cities,” his first major composition for symphony orchestra. His recordings for ECM include La Jalousie/Red Run/Herakles 2/Befreiung, the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired SHADOW/Landscape with Argonauts, Der Mann im Fahrstuhl, and Ou Bien le Débarquement Désastreux.

“Hommage – Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler” is a German only 11-track LP recorded live with Alfred Harth at Flöz in Berlin on October 3rd 1976, released in 1977.

Tracklist:
A1a. Der Zerrissene Rock 2:00
A1b. So, Das Ist, Was Wir Brauchen 4:15
A1c. Gedanken Über Die Rote Fahne 1:00
A2. Zur Überwindung Von Schwierigkeiten 6:40
A3. Die Wirtshausszene 2:10
A4. Grossvater Stöffel 4:30
A5. Sieg Im Volkslied! 3:20
B1. Die Haltbare Graugans – Ostwärts Mit Oder Ohne Nach Quong Quong ? 7:30
B2. Lange Weile 1:46
B3. Vorwärts! 5:51
B4. Fugato Spontini 1:17
B5. Spui’ Ma’ Wieder Oan, Dass D’Zeit Vergeht 1:32
B6. I Clowns 0:45

Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth – Hommage – Vier Fäuse für Hanns Eisler
(320 kbps, cover art included)

VA – Burg Waldeck Festival 1967 – Chanson Folklore International

This double album documents the fouth Burg Waldeck Festival, 1967. The festival theme was “Das engagierte Lied” (“The engaged song”), three thousand people came to attend the concerts and lectures given by forty-two different groups, solo performers, and speakers.

Refelcting the gradual politicization of the festival, the artists were all asked to answer four questions about the politically engaged song and their own artistic commitment. The organizers stated in the festival programm: “The fourth festivl should openly discuss not only the difficult questions of our society, but also the difficult question about the form of artistic engagement.”

As´well as the usual figures of Degenhardt, Schobert and Black, Hedemann, Wader, Mossmann, Mey and Hüsch there were also several first time appearances including the author Erich Fried and the gypsy jazz group Schnuckenack Reinhardt. The GDR was “officially” represented in the form of the Brecht singer Hermann Hähnel and by Inge Lammel and Erna Berger from the Institut für Arbeiterlieder of the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. They presented a workshop on Wolfgang Steinitz´s research on the German democratic folk song. In the discussions, however, they were asked uncomfortable questions about Wolf Biermann and the suppressed Liedermacher scene in the GDR, questions which they dodged or were not able to answer.

A unprecedent event was the concert of Alex Kulisiewicz from Poland, who performed in the clothes of a concentration camp prisoner. With broken voice and alarming authenticity he sang songs he had gathered as an inmate at Sachsenhausen. After the war he had written down from memory seven hundred pages of songs and texts in four languages.

Burg Waldeck Festival 1967 – CD 1
Burg Waldeck Festival 1967 – CD 2
(192 kbps, front cover included)

The Vietnam Veterans – The Days Of Pearly Spencer (1988)

Thanks to a friend bringing back “The Vietnam Veterans” to my attention (by the way, greetings to all pudels out there!), here´s another band that was really on heavy rotation on my record player through the 80s and 90s.

“The Vietnam Veterans” were a six-person french band, playing a very unique and fantastic psychedelic music style.

“Souls must have been sold for a performance like this”, the “Bucketfull Of Brains” magazine once wrote about the Veterans great live album called “Green Peas”.


The Vietnam Veterans – The Days Of Pearly Spencer
192 kbps

Max Hansen – Perlen der Kleinkunst

Max Hansen was born in Mannheim, Germany, but was raised by his step parents in Munich. His mother was a Danish Actress, Eva Haller, his father’s name was von Waldheim.

In his school days, he already sang at the Opera House, so he earned the nickname “The Little Caruso” (“Der kleine Caruso”). Later he studied Music and Voice and got a job at the “Simplizissimus Cabaret” in Munich. From 1914 he played operettas in Vienna and became a good friend of Franz Lehár. After that he worked in Berlin at the Metropole Theater and became there a superstar of operettas, revues, cabaret and radio.

He began acting in five silent films, from 1926 to 1928. His first talkie was “Wien, du Stadt der Lieder” (1930) (“Vienna, City of Song”) (1930). In 1932 he played opposite Gitta Alpar in “Die – oder keine” (1932) (“She, or Nobody”).

His career was brought to an abrupt end because of his Jewish origin but this was only a pretext. He attracted anger of the Nazis above all since he ridiculed Adolf Hitler as homosexual in his hit “Warst Du schon mal in mich verliebt?” in 1932.

Hansen went to Vienna in 1933 and continued to play in theaters. Only before the affiliation of Austria with the Deutsche Reich Hansen moved to Copenhagen. From there he appeared in scandinavian theaters and found work in the Sweden film business. In addition he wrote several songs under the pseudonymous “Sylvester”.
In 1951 Max Hansen returned to Germany for occasional stage engagements but he didn’t shoot films any longer.
He died in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1961.

Here´s a fine compilation with 40 tunes by Max Hansen:

Max Hansen – Perlen der Kleinkunst CD 1
Max Hansen – Perlen der Kleinkunst CD 2
(192 kbps, cover art included)