P s i c a s t e n i a L e g e n d á r i a
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 53:05] all rights reserved
Dedicated to Kraftwerk
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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link:
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)
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"What more to say about the 'Power Station'?
According to music journalist Neil McCormick, Kraftwerk might be 'the most influential group in pop history'. NME wrote: 'The Beatles and Kraftwerk may not have the ring of The Beatles and the Stones, but, nonetheless, these are the two most important bands in music history'. Kraftwerk's music has directly influenced all the electronic acts that followed in their wake but also many popular artists from diverse genres of music, including David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Ultravox, John Foxx, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Visage, Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force, Grandmaster Flash, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Björk, Daft Punk, Ladytron, Joy Division, New Order, Blondie, LCD Soundsystem, Baal des Quat'z'arts, to name only a few.
In my convinced opinion, from incidental citations to explicit mentions; more than that - from indirect or direct several tributes to the Deutsch Electronic Stars, one of the Olympians: 'Psicastenia Legendária'.
Some believe that just like Bach or Mozart, Kraftwerk is also one of the musical references that will surely perpetuate. Others believe that if Bach and Mozart were alive, they would be doing the same kind of music that the creators of 'Computerwelt'. 'Psicastenia Legendária' reveals itself to be a sound Work able to corroborate all these hypotheses. Therefore, in complex contemporaneity, who is & was able to accomplish that? Die - at least here - Mensch-Maschine: O.M.
Some tributes are clearly copies. Others are so disjointed that look more like a scam. Some are slaughtered by the qualitative discrepancy between those who did and those for whom they were made. Others are competent but not surprising. And so on.
Antipode to so many excrescences, a tribute will be at high level when endowed with rare balance. Who pays obeisance keeps orbits that revolve around the own personality, while inventively/idiosyncratically brings to light stylistic filigrees of those to whom honor. So is a temperance point that few artist can master. We recognize who is the creator, we recognize the focus, and yet we're surprised because it comes a 'third bank' that breaks any coherent borders. In this way I categorize Otacílio Melgaço.
Best of Kraftwerk is represented here. And, amazingly, even improvisation (although some less perceptive/tuned not even realize that this happens). In shows - I assure you, any extemporization - that comes from them - is fabulous. A differential of Melgacian prism (if you compare it to other deference) is how much, behind the timbre surfaces - such as the drum machine, computerized noises, digital voices etc -, there's a perspective coming from the medulla of contemporary classical music. [It's not without reason that there's a bootleg of the synthpop group whose title is 'Toccata Electronica' or that one of his musics - check 'Trans-Europe Express' - has the name 'Franz Schubert' or the 'Ananas Symphonie' inserted in 'Ralf and Florian'.] I'm convinced that the endoskeleton of this album have (as a nomenclature that today sounds strangely) 'serious' nature, to say the least. If many artists who came of the popular niche (rock, hip hop, techno and many others) were 'energized' in Germanic Power Station, it would be magnificent a top composer of contemporary music (which also dominates the non-classical universe) to lean over the legacy of Ralf Hütter & Company.
Listen to the harmonic architecture (just like a surreal daedal cathedral) of the 'spiegelsaal' third Piece; or - starting with choreographed bells; 'heimatklänge' - the numinous coloratura of the fourth; or the 'first movement' of 'tongebirge' fifth and its dynamic timpani... I think this 'triumvirate' is enough to mirror what I have argued. Another highlight is how the tracks were sequenced. There's an umbilical cord between them. A sonic conducting wire. 'Detail' that elevates the meticulousness and the refinement of the concept behind. Extrapolations also arise. To name just one example, the contrapuntal beats of the second Piece suggest the spirit of Free Jazz!
'Psicastenia Legendária' embraces all I have explained and more.
Arthur C. Clarke said that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. Now, from this reverberating encomium, such words can be understood in its most captivating and transubstantial sense.
Die Stimme der Energie!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"'Psicastenia Legendária' ('Legendary Psychasthenia').
'A concept developed by the social theorist Roger Caillios, Legendary Psychasthenia refers to the ability of some animals to alter their appearance in response to their physical environment. A chameleon, for example, changes color in order to blend into its surroundings. Caillois compares this biological phenomenon to psychological experiences of subjects who perceive themselves becoming absorbed into, or mixed up with, the physical space surrounding them (one of his examples is the fear of the dark). Lacan, who associated with Caillois, is intrigued by this idea because it offers another model of a transformation in an individual through an encounter with an external stimulus.'
The own metamorphosis that the - hither - laureate Kraftwerk lived, from krautrock to an electronic 'crescendo' and so becoming iconic to a Computer World. It legitimizes the perspicacious insight that Mr. Melgaço had. There are several built-in connotations. 'The mankind before the irreversible advance of technology' seems to me the unavoidably generic and both frightening and exciting. Nothing more current. We witnessed a gradual metamorphosis from man to robot and the trend is that for a long time both become indiscernible. Paraphrasing the honorees, yes 'We will be robots'. Or 'the robots will be us'. Probably the same thing. A trite example and reflecting a primary phase of this: (I do not will need to quote bionic/prosthetic technologies and neither chips implemented in bodies), there's no more border between human fingers and a smartphone, agree? The timing of this tribute so is impeccable. What was once (by the Germans) a 'prologue-almost-omen', today is (by the Brazilian) a factual introduction.
The artistically inspiring scope - above - applied to the panoramic cyber context of this phonographic record is further proof of the maximum multifaceted genius of the composer and instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço.
His ascendancy reached immeasurable territorialities. When I heard a robotic voice pleading for help (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn Ouvertüre), I confess (Ohm Sweet Ohm/O.M. Sweet O.M.) that I stayed in fact touched. My testimony is worth as a metaphor confirming the actual ballast of this resounding offspring. Just like the album cover, impeccable figuratively as a visual translation of the theme plus brings the red & black colors: so semiotically Kraftwerkian.
An interesting difference is the subject of oral element. If by Kraftwerk
we all gravitate around 'I'm your slave / I'm your worker / We're charging our battery / And now we're full of energy / We're functioning automatic / And we are dancing mechanic / We are programmed just to do anything you want us to' or 'I am adding / And subtracting / I'm controlling / And composing / By pressing down a special key / It plays a little melody / I'm the operator with my pocket calculator' or 'Another lonely night / Stare at the TV screen / I don't know what to do / I need a rendezvous / I call this number / For a data date / Computer Love' or 'Interpol and Deutsche Bank, FBI and Scotland Yard / Business, numbers, money, people / Computer world';
Otacílio throws us toward Rilkean 'Sein Blick ist von Vorübergehen der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille—und hört im Herzen auf zu sein' or 'His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone'.
More: the disc name is in Portuguese - original language of Melgaço. But the compositions (and all sound poetry contained therein) in German - the honorees are German. A implicit evidence of what is an authentic and personalized and equalized tribute. Alias, still in a dialectic rizomatic, the title of the Pieces - all relate to philosophy. In short, everything here is absorbable/permeable; the individual of the future will be ontologically chameleonic. Not so much human, presumably.
We receive Melgacian stimuli both externally and internally. And it's up to us to decipher which will be our model of transformation. But anyway, at this crucial moment the artist hears our 'cry for help' and he sustains us as, how could I say?, a Legendary and Psychasthenian Power Station." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - Kraftwerk ("Power Station") is a German electronic music band formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970 in Düsseldorf, and fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008.
The signature Kraftwerk sound combines driving, repetitive rhythms with catchy melodies, mainly following a Western classical style of harmony, with a minimalistic and strictly electronic instrumentation. The group's simplified lyrics are at times sung through a vocoder or generated by computer-speech software. Kraftwerk was one of the first groups to popularize electronic music and are considered to be pioneers.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kraftwerk's distinctive sound was revolutionary, and has had a lasting effect across many genres of modern music. According to The Observer, "no other band since the Beatles has given so much to pop culture" and a wide range of artists has been influenced by their music and imagery. In January 2014 the Grammy Academy honored Kraftwerk with a Lifetime Achievement Award;
II - Be sure to check also
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/klingklang-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-40-57
III - The Edge of Surrealism (Roger Caillios) >>
books.google.com.br/books?id=_Gv4659MqYgC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=legendary+psychasthenia&source=bl&ots=sTCv4t-YAh&sig=prS1zfleDTPeTbjnFPduiw4Yw3E&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=legendary%20psychasthenia&f=false
...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...
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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.
