IGOR WAKHEVITCH - Hathor LP prog rar avant garde nww

	€		89
	$		103

IGOR WAKHEVITCH

"Hathor"

LP, Atlantic Records (France), 1973

cover / record: ex / ex

Rare and great (maybe his best) release. Original copy with gatefold cover and sticker (to hide the swastika).

"Dating from 1973, shortly after working with Terry Riley on his Happy Ending soundtrack,
there’s an obvious big advance in Hathor "Lithurgie du Souffle Pour la Résurrection des Morts", with greater use of keyboards, synthesizers, and looping techniques. But Hathor is no mere synth album, far from it, but is Igor Wakhévitch’s most powerful opus. Making use of the Paris Opera choir (no-less), along with weirdly processed vocals, his usual off-the-wall electronics, and even drum/sequencer drives unprecedented in any form of music before this. It’s another sonic roller-coaster ride, in which we experience an ominous bellowing God-like voice heralding something visionary.
As with his previous albums, Hathor contains a number of separate tracks that continue or segue from each other, amounting to what feels like one work. Here, we have surging electronic and percussion drives, a climax sparked off by lightning, thunder-crashes, a wealth of weird contorted voices, and much much more. Here tension gives way to intense power resulting in a kind of dark Vangelis - on the edge ! With a weird Gothic choral number and another electronic rock opus to follow Hathor really flies ! Only the closing coda offers relief, with a reflection on obvious Terry Riley influences, and hinting at the albums to come." (fractal recordings)

www.pitchforkmedia.com - Friday, June 14th, 2002 - Website (USA)

It Was the Strangest Record I Had Ever Heard.

Igor Wakhevitch was an obscure French composer who apparently took pleasure in messing with peoples’ heads. He had studied with terry Riley, Olivier Messiaen and famed stage director Pierre Schaeffer, as well as having ties with the Soft Machine and Salvador Dali. He made six studio albums in the 70s, which might best be described as encapsulated chemical enhancements. I have no idea what kind of shit he was on, though I would say that his very odd mastery of noise, experimental classical and synthesizer technology was none too compromised by his mental state. Fractal records reissued all of his records as a box set in 1998, including 1971’s Docteur Faust, and I highly urge anyone with an interest in fringe music to give them a listen. For now, I’ll share the story of my first exposure to Wakhevitch’s world, via the turntable of a mystical shaman (aka heavy duty strange music collector) I know. See it as a window into wonderland, or cautionary tale.

What had I walked into? “I should tell you, I’m pretty fucked up,” he said, and the strange, warm look he gave ma told me more than I wanted to know about his current state. “What did you do?” I asked, ready to hear only a little of his messy private moments-- I wasn’t the kind to get way fucked up on anything. Of course, I was completely drunk at the time, and he had some pot in his loft, which I hadn’t touched yet. “Do you want some pot?” He was stalling. “Not yet, maybe later.” And then a bit of silence, as he just looked at me. He was definitely out there, and I knew he was a serious acidhead, though I thought he’d told me he’d given that stuff up because of some weird stomach problem he had. He gave me a look like your dog gives you when you shut the door in its face just as its ready to jump on your chest. “Hmmm, okay,” was the only response I got, and he turned around to face his turnable.

“So, I wanted to play this for you last time. I think you”ll like it.” We had a long history of trying to knock each other out with new music. He’d play me some obscure experimental band from France, and I’d play him my Smile boot (extra potent, as he’d heard virtually no Beach Boys); I’d play him Scott Walker. I know he must have thought I was a square, and I definitely thought he was strange, but I can’t lie: he exposed to me a lot of shit I would otherwise never have heard. However, I knew he was high as a fucking kite, and was fairly worried that this was about to turn into some never-ending jizz fest for him and his chemical brain.

“But I didn’t want to play this, because it’s so devastating.” Whatever, just put it on, and let’s get this over with. “What is it?” I asked him, but he was still turned around, intent on placing this thing on the turntable. “So, yeah, I did some acid about an hour ago, and this album always kills me like that.”
He put it on, turned around slowly, showed me the cover and I laughed in his face. This record, Docteur Faust, featured this incredibly stupid looking 60s cartoon version of Skeletor or something, surrounded by outreaching demon claws. This huge face stared right at me, red background and psychedelic medallion sun symbol overhead. It was in ‘stereo’. But I didn’t have time to actually turn my thoughts into an insult, because the music started, and for the first time that night, I was aware that dropping acid may have been a good idea. Something like a filter for this stuff, because it was in fact the strangest I have ever heard. And it went like this.

“Levez-vous,” boomed an announcer, along with some other French words that were indiscernable under the dense layers of echo. It was like a stadium proclamation, and this kid’s five-foot speakers did the voice considerable justice. And then someone started playing a very heavy beat, like the beats on the first Funkadelic record, but completely stoned out and with no regard for decent funk - it was moldy and decayed, with a tight snare, but the slowest tempo known to man, and the echo made it huge. There were things happening in the background, too, like what sounded of people screaming and guitars being torn apart. Every so often, a wah-wah would accentuate the slowness and the dense, whore-y mess of a beat. Was I still drunk? This was a very sick thrill, and watching my stellar pal, already completely lost, I knew I was in this alone. And they were still screaming.

Now, suddenly, a bass run and faster tempo completely changes the atmosphere. The drums aren’t playing hard beats, but tom-heavy free jazz fills, and the bass is doing its best to sound completely incompetent. Okay, so here’s where it becomes stoner music, right? The screeches return, and then a massive crescendo... to a full orchestra! What the fuck just happened? Violins jump out of both speakers, playing different runs, timpani pounds, trumpets soar overhead, and out of nowhere the whole piece becomes a hellish scherzo. It backs off, and comes back, like a tide of horror movie and avant-guard classical clichés. But then, the xylophone slams a furious run, as more trumpets scream overhead, and the strings cut through the omnipresent echo to become louder and louder and louder. My ears hurt, and I want to get up.

But then it all goes away. Soft choral voices chatter like a crowd of alien tourists around my slightly frazzled head. They pop and sway, and then whisper, as a triangle alarms in the distance. The timpani urges them on to strange medieval fanfares, and then the sopranos begin to carry a tune with bells, and a soloist begins to speak French about who knows what and the gong. The gong stops them, but you can still hear about a thousand bats deeply buried in the distance, crying. And the choir returns! They’ve chanting some strange Mass in unison, and the violins play tremolo unison lines to support them. The gong hits in between every line become increasingly louder. These people, they sound dead, or in a trance. And then the women begin a shrill cry that swoops down with an odd synthesizer and overhead I can see -- I mean, I can hear -- more strange synthesizers flying by. The entire group collapses into disgusting bass splatters.

The church bell signals what seems to be found sound of an actual Mass, but filtered through a god-awful flanger, and someone begins snapping wood in between every line. The snapping is quite violent, and becomes more frequent as this processed section of the Mass continues. I haven’t noticed this train moving from left to right to left, as it snuck up on me while I was paying attention to the Mass. And now there’s a terribly loud synthesizer motif repeating from the left speaker. And it becomes so loud as to drown out everything but what sounds like an electric saw in the right speaker. There’s also some kind of emergency alarm going off, and a trombone blasts bass notes like the mothership in Close Encounters. I can now hear someone speaking backwards, and the train suddenly blasts out of the right speaker.

At this point, a hard, doom-rock band starts in, like fucking Spinal Tap dropping “Stonehenge” right in the middle of the whole mess. Okay, some breathing room. They repeat some very standard 70s satanic riff-rock stuff, but also, someone hacks away on a snare drum on the far right. And they stop suddenly, giving way to a solo violin and light gong touch. The orchestra’s back. The brass plays a very mournful chord, and the solo cello announces new trouble at hand. The trumpet agrees, and the xylophone and cello begin to converse in some horribly muted language. The gong interrupts, and like a boxer’s jab, the entire orchestra returns with a furious, Varese-esque exposition. The percussion bullies the strings, which are by now content to lay low. The group makes one last stand, as the timpanis hammer the tempo. And suddenly it stops, and nothing remains.

This leads to another track, with a harpsichord introduction not unlike some of the more somber church hymns you may have heard. It gives way to cyclinal white-noise pulse, full of bass. A,d a lone flute begins one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies I have ever heard. This is truly alien music, and that flute line, seemingly way off in the distance, cuts so easily through the tumbling wall of noise. It drops octaves, scatters beneath the wall, trills and returns effortlessly. If the record ended there, I’d have walked out of the room cleansed. But it doesn’t. A rude electric guitar announces a new harpsichord fanfare. The guitar plays a grungy riff, and the bass comes back, but only with flamenco-like percussion as timekeeper. It’s as if Neil Young suddenly became producer and xas vacationing in Madrid.

Naturally, a horse whinnies over and over again as the castanets play on and the harpsichord just starts pounding. I thought those things were supposed to be delicate, but maybe not. Just as it starts to get violent, South American percussion takes over, and a snare plays a very military figure. The guitars are now in both speakers, alternating noise and wah-wah riffs. The echo returns, and whatever link this has to straight up acid rock is broken by the primal shouts in the background and the general lack of order in the riffing. It becomes a guitar-caveman duet, and just as I start to think the record is falling off into a psych-haze, the synth noise starts to pick up. At that point, and the military snare returns. The toms blare, and the snare plays a repetitive figure. It has become a very loud percussion feature, and just as quickly stops. Nothing happens. That is the end of the record.

I sit still, and my friend says nothing. After a moment, I turn to him. He’s already smiling. “Wow, “ I mutter, and he knowingly shakes his head. I turn to face the turntable, a bit in awe of the machinery that brought that performance to me. I’m sure I must’ve gone over that last moment a hundred times in my mind, the initial numbness to feeling, and the gradual mystique I unraveled for days on the Internet looking for information about the album and the artist. It was the strangest record I had ever heard, and though I’ve had many chances since then to catch up with it, I think theres’s some value in preserving that first high. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you might look around for it. Just be careful, and have fun.
Dominique LEONE.

Please see my other auctions for more items by Nurse With Wound, Maurizio Bianchi, John Duncan, Seesselberg, Yaacov Agam, H.N.A.S., Organum, New Blockaders, Hermann Nitsch, Joe Jones, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Jacques Berrocal, Otto Muehl, Kommissar Hjuler etc. and have a look at my homepage:

youdonthavetocallitmusic.com

Postage:

Germany: 1 - 4 LPs = 5 Euro (versichert)

Europe: 1 LP = 6 Euro (airmail), 2 Euro more for each additional item

Overseas: 1 LP = 12 Euro airmail, 6 Euro more for each additional item or  7 Euro surface, 3 Euro more for each additional item

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