Filmakers and composers Nicolas Humbert and Marc Parisotto revisit the tapes recorded by Jean Vapeur for the film by Humbert & Werner Penzel, "Step Across the Border" with soundtrack by Fred Frith, extracting more of Vapeur's fascinating field recordings and adding music by Fred Frith with additional music & voice from Tom Cora, Iva Bittova, John Zorn, &c.
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Fred Frith-guitar, bass, organ, piano
Nicolas Humbert-composition
Marc Parisotto-composition
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UPC: 3760131270983
Label: RogueArt
Catalog ID: ROG-0098
Squidco Product Code: 28361
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: France
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Field and live music recordings by Jean Vapeur.
Additional recordings and micro impromptu by Marc Parisotto.
Studio recording by Gerd Baumann
"One hundred tapes. Recorded by Jean Vapeur on the now legendary Nagra IV S tape recorder. A box full of the original sound recordings for Step Across the Border, the film Werner Penzel and I travelled around the world to make in 1988-1989 with musician Fred Frith. Just before the collapse of Socialism and the digital take-over of the world. Twenty minutes on every tape. That is, thirty-three hours of sound material. In the end, only ninety minutes of it are in the film. The rest of the recordings have been slumbering away in an old crate, and trailed along on our every studio move, surviving icy winters and even a flood in our archive vault.
Now and again I need to clean the tape debris off the Nagra with a brush. Little piles of magnetic dust. But the sounds are still there! Wear debris, a symbol of elapsed time.
All the material that reappears again. Moments, life stories, drifting tracks. Wonderful Tom Cora with his cello. Died way too young, just a few years after Step Across the Border appeared. But the unmistakable sound of his cello remains. The voice of Jonas Mekas, free spirit and clown of independent cinema. And the voice of Robert Frank, the great American photographer and chronicler of the Beat Generation, who invented the cut-up montage that is the basis of our sound composition. Our subway ride with him to visit his son Pablo at a psychiatric clinic in the Bronx. Now Jonas Mekas and Robert Frank are no longer alive. Both died in the half-year after the Berlin premiere of Cut Up The Border.
So many life stories, sounds, music, voices reappear in this material. Trails of noise, recordings: of New York streets at night, game arcades in Shibuya, cicada fields in Provence, seagull cries in Yorkshire. Tapes depicting time itself, like geological strata.
French sound artist Marc Parisotto and I opened the box again and re-composed the raw material together with Fred Frith into an imaginative journey through meandering sound- scapes and echoes of the past. 1 hour out of 33 hours. Cut Up The Border."-Nicolas Humbert, October 2019
In memory of Res Balzli, who made "Step Across The Border" possible.
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Fred Frith "Though the point of reference for many remains the iconic band Henry Cow, which he co-founded in 1968 and which broke up more than 30 years ago, Fred Frith has never really stood still for an instant. In bands such as Art Bears, Massacre, Skeleton Crew, Keep the Dog, Tense Serenity, the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, Eye to Ear, and most recently Cosa Brava, he has always held true to his roots in rock and folk music, while exploring influences that range from the literary works of Eduardo Galeano to the art installations of Cornelia Parker. The release of the seminal Guitar Solos in 1974 enabled him to simultaneously carve out a place for himself in the international improvised music scene, not only as an acclaimed solo performer but in the company of artists as diverse as Han Bennink, Chris Cutler, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Evelyn Glennie, Ikue Mori, Louis Sclavis, Stevie Wishart, Wu Fei, Camel Zekri, John Zorn, and scores of others. He has also developed a personal compositional language in works written for Arditti Quartet, Asko Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble Modern, Concerto Köln, and ROVA Sax Quartet, for example. Fred has been active as a composer for dance since the early 1980s, working with choreographers Bebe Miller, François Verret, and especially long-time collaborator and friend Amanda Miller, with whom he has created a compelling body of work over the last twenty years. His film soundtracks (for award-winning films like Thomas Riedelsheimer's Rivers and Tides and Touch the Sound, Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods, and LSD, and Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow's Thirst, to name a few) won him a lifetime achievement award from Prague's "Music on Film, Film on Music" Festival (MOFFOM) in 2007. The following year he received Italy's Demetrio Stratos Prize (previously given to Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk) for his life's work in experimental music, and in 2010 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in his home county of Yorkshire. Fred currently teaches in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California (renowned for over fifty years as the epicenter of the American experimental tradition), and in the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland." ^ Hide Bio for Fred Frith • Show Bio for Nicolas Humbert Nicolas Humbert is director, writer & cinematographer, known for Middle of the Moment, Step Across the Border, Fog Chasers, and Wild Plants. ^ Hide Bio for Nicolas Humbert • Show Bio for Marc Parisotto "Marc Parisotto is a composer, born May 1, 1957 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France" ^ Hide Bio for Marc Parisotto
12/6/2023
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
12/6/2023
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
12/6/2023
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. Just Call Her Nagra (2:51)
2. At Tim's House (0:58)
3. Complex (4:16)
4. Traffic Jam (1:50)
5. Jonas (1:25)
6. Bach And Echo (2:10)
7. Samurai Pachinko Concert (4:28)
8. Le Lion de Leipzig (0:57)
9. And If I Had A Heart (7:36)
10. Clapping Rain (2:50)
11. Big Byt (2:15)
12. Le Train Fantôme (2:13)
13. Your Name Please (1:33)
14. Thank You Tom (3:18)
15. Go To The End (3:35)
16. Lost In A Subway Station (3:56)
17. Pacific (1:10)
18. Haco's Cat (1:51)
19. I'm Not Diderot (4:56)
20. Too Loud for Dogs (3:17)
Compositional Forms
Electro-Acoustic
Electroacoustic Composition
Improvised Music
Organized Sound and Sample Based Music
Guitarists, &c.
Frith, Fred
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
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