Sunday, June 3, 2007

Alice In Wonderland




"Shortly after this release, Greif teamed up with Mikail Bohonus of WarWorld to form STATIC EFFECT who performed improvisationally around loosely defined musical structures. They toured North America and Canada and released a number of cassettes and vinyl before disbanding in 1990. By this time Greif had begun work on his most ambitious project to date--a 6 hour musical and textural setting for Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland". The spoken text is often deconstructed into phonemes of pure sound and then returned to recognizable words. This project took 5 years and the CDs were released serially on the Staalplaat label in special packaging."

From Disquiet :

"Greif lifted the text from a three-LP spoken-word edition, dating from early-'60s Britain; he found it in a thrift-store bargain bin. To the somewhat abbreviated story line, reduced by approximately 20 minutes from Lewis Carroll's original, Greif — ever the Mad Sampler — has added a barrage of aural cues and backdrops, culling material from a variety of sources; reggae dub techniques, Gregorian chant samples, tubular bells, ethnic percussion, and a greater number of unplaceable sounds color the releases...Part radio-drama serial and part marathon "listening environment" (Greif's term)."

From Incursion :

"I attempted to use the speech in three distinct ways. Firstly, in a traditional manner of storytelling with the music as background, although the music being far more experimental than typical. Secondly, to cut the speech into patterns that would intertwine with the music in order to force it into the mould of a song structure. So that the spoken words would operate as lyrics, without melody, of course, but rhythmically. Finally, to deconstruct the speech itself into abstraction, cutting the words into phonemes, or altering the voice electronically to the extent it becomes purely sound. The tricky part for me was to try to use these three methods of dealing with the text and still not lose sight of the story itself. I wanted the piece to move through cycles from clear story-telling to pure abstraction and then back again. And also to have the entire 6 hours move in a larger cycle, mirroring the smaller cycles within. Not that the main theme was a psychedelic experience, but I intended the work to move through real time in the manner of one."

Greif at Discogs at Scaruffi

A B C D E F G H I J
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1 comment:

wassonii said...

There are known issues with the latter part of Disc 4. My apologies, but let that be a lesson to all to properly archive.
This is still available and as such, the entire set will only be here a few days.
Look to the alphabet.