Would you like to explore the deep musical space and be surprised by the most daring experimental sounds? Here are some goodies for you: the best weird albums in the Orbeatize catalogue, all to be collected.
Peter Frohmader – Live Electronic Music (BEAT 03)
Do you love the kraut genre and its exponents, from Tangerine Dream to Kraftwerk, passing through Klaus Schulze, Faust, Popol Vuh and Cluster? Then you really need to get to know the work of Peter Frohmader, especially in this virtuoso live performance. Frohmader is primarily a composer of scores for his bass guitar and follows the biomechanical theories of artist H.R. Giger, with whom he has happily collaborated. Frohmader’s technique has grown so much over time that he can handle any synthesizer and thus increase the oneiric and dystopian effect of his works. It is no coincidence that his works are in fact permeated by Dadaist expressivism and inspired by the German cinema of the Twenties: Homunculus, Golem, Narkose above all. A multifaceted and obscure author, he is also a visual artist and has edited the soundtrack and the realization of films, multimedia events and much more.
Elicoide – Our Time (BEAT 05)
Elicoide is an experimental electro-jazz project, imagined and realized by Franco Nanni in 1987, with the fundamental collaboration of Paolo Grandi on double bass. Original release by Orbeatize in 2021, the album testifies to the 2018 reunion with Grandi, in a historic performance at Macao in Milan to review the tracks from their debut album, Elicoide to be exact, with the addition of the unreleased Our Time. The title of the album is a response to a 1969 song by King Crimson: “But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying”. That “tomorrow” has arrived and it is “our time”; Our Time: a painful meditation on the uncertain destiny of man’s presence on earth. A long suite with a “pastel” melancholy, an enormous and composite fresco, marked by the sound of an old alarm clock that cyclically re-emerges and speaks to us of the inexorable decline of everything, consumed by time. The work has the ambition to disorient and surprise the listener, uncertain between being in front of a contemporary product or in front of an archaeological discovery of old masters of an unknown group of the 70s.
Roland Barker – The Eternal Optimist (ORB 23)
Roland Barker is a well-known name, especially in the U.S., as a composer and author of soundtracks and as a member of Young Scientist, a trio that had established itself in the genre ambient/minimal drawing inspiration from the experiences of Brian Eno, Cluster and Harmonia. At the same time, the volcanic author recorded two extremely experimental, surprising and disruptive works on musicassette: “Vortexes”, self-distributed in 1979, and “The Eternal Optimist”, published in 1982 by Engram Records. The twelve tracks contained in the two works, now unobtainable, are now reissued on vinyl by Orbeatize with a meticulous work of restoration and sound cleaning.
Enrico Serotti – Homemade Music Vol. I (ORB 24)
From Kraftwerk to Lucio Battisti, from electronic synth to analog. This album by the guitarist of Confusional Quartet is the first of a successful collaboration with Orbeatize. Serotti realizes a masterclass on the theme: “post guitar”. You can listen to one of the weirdest covers of “The Model” by Kraftwerk, the cosmic “Lo Sport” and 26 other pearls all recorded at home. The work was distributed for the first time in 1981 by Demo City (a division of Oderso Rubini’s Italian Records).
The author himself recounts its genesis: “All tracks were recorded live on a four-track cassette. Generally, ‘buona la prima’. The instruments are varied, from mandolin to guitars and electric bass, guitar synths, drum machines, tape echo, some keyboards. At the time, there was often some instrument “parked” temporarily by someone in my room. Essentially every track is composed with what I had on hand at that particular time”.
You can buy all these albums in a dedicate promotion.
