R o r s c h a c h

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 49:33] all rights reserved

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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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"Frank Zappa had his ´Jazz from Hell´.
´Rorschach´ is the ´Jazz from Hell´ by Otacílio Melgaço." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´Le Vampire´

Toi qui, comme un coup de couteau,
Dans mon coeur plaintif es entrée;
Toi qui, forte comme un troupeau
De démons, vins, folle et parée,

De mon esprit humilié
Faire ton lit et ton domaine;
— Infâme à qui je suis lié
Comme le forçat à la chaîne,

Comme au jeu le joueur têtu,
Comme à la bouteille l'ivrogne,
Comme aux vermines la charogne
— Maudite, maudite sois-tu!

J'ai prié le glaive rapide
De conquérir ma liberté,
Et j'ai dit au poison perfide
De secourir ma lâcheté.

Hélas! le poison et le glaive
M'ont pris en dédain et m'ont dit:
«Tu n'es pas digne qu'on t'enlève
À ton esclavage maudit,

Imbécile! — de son empire
Si nos efforts te délivraient,
Tes baisers ressusciteraient
Le cadavre de ton vampire!»

— Charles Baudelaire

It will be fascinating for some, will be inaudible to others. One way or another, will have its artistic purpose fulfilled. Through incredible timbristic experiments and a sense of high improvisation, this discographic record is also a test - worthy of Hermann Rorschach.
But instead of images:
S-o-u-n-d-s.

(Do not be astonished at my Baudelairean analogies below. Understand as poetic metaphors full of connotations... And the most unexpected will be the most verisimilar.

Still under the auspices of Charles-Pierre, what we experience here is perhaps a vampiric transmutation, ie the Bat in Albatross. Or is the reverse?)

But instead of images:
S-o-u-n-d-s.

S-o-u-n-d-s like flowers of evil;
Like flowers beyond good and evil;
Like a gambler to his game
(as gamblers to the wheel's bright spell);
Like a drunkard to his bottle
(as drunkards to their raging thirst);
Like a sinking into the plaintive heart;
Like the speedy sword
(ardent and adorned);
Like thy bed and thy domain;
Like a ruthless deed;
Like the phial and the lamina;
Like maggot-worms to their cadaver;
S-o-u-n-d-s strong as a - wildly dancing - demon host
whose ART possessed the humbled soul;
S-o-u-n-d-s sharper than a dagger thrust;
S-o-u-n-d-s keen as a carving blade;
S-o-u-n-d-s like kisses able to resurrect a vampire!
Fate.
S-o-u-n-d-s like the deep, briny sea;
Like the great white wings;
Like the winged voyager;
Like the poet/prince of cloud and sky;
S-o-u-n-d-s like the freedom back." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - The Rorschach test (also known as the Rorschach inkblot test, the Rorschach technique, or simply the inkblot test) is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.

In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test. In a national survey in the U.S., the Rorschach was ranked eighth among psychological tests used in outpatient mental health facilities. It is the second most widely used test by members of the Society for Personality Assessment, and it is requested by psychiatrists in 25% of forensic assessment cases, usually in a battery of tests that often include the MMPI-2 and the MCMI-III. In surveys, the use of Rorschach ranges from a low of 20% by correctional psychologists to a high of 80% by clinical psychologists engaged in assessment services, and 80% of psychology graduate programs surveyed teach it.

Although the Exner Scoring System (developed since the 1960s) claims to have addressed and often refuted many criticisms of the original testing system with an extensive body of research, some researchers continue to raise questions. The areas of dispute include the objectivity of testers, inter-rater reliability, the verifiability and general validity of the test, bias of the test's pathology scales towards greater numbers of responses, the limited number of psychological conditions which it accurately diagnoses, the inability to replicate the test's norms, its use in court-ordered evaluations, and the proliferation of the ten inkblot images, potentially invalidating the test for those who have been exposed to them;

II - Jazz from Hell is a Grammy Award–winning instrumental album from Frank Zappa. It was released in 1986 by Barking Pumpkin Records (vinyl) and by Rykodisc (CD).

All compositions were executed by Frank Zappa on the Synclavier DMS with the exception of "St. Etienne", a guitar solo excerpted from a live performance of "Drowning Witch" from a concert in Saint-Étienne, France on Zappa's 1982 tour.

"While You Were Art II" is a Synclavier performance based on a transcription of Zappa's improvised guitar solo on the track "While You Were Out" from the Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar album. The unreleased original Synclavier performance was done using only the unit's FM synthesis, while the recording found here was Zappa's "deluxe" arrangement featuring newer samples and timbres.

"Night School" was possibly named for a late-night show that Zappa pitched to ABC; the network did not pick it up. A music video was made for the song.

"G-Spot Tornado", assumed by Zappa to be impossible to play by humans, would be performed by Ensemble Modern on the concert recording The Yellow Shark.

Although this is an instrumental album, there is an unconfirmed report that the Fred Meyer chain of stores sold Jazz from Hell in their Music Market department featuring an RIAA Parental Advisory sticker. This could have been the result of Zappa's feud with the PMRC, an objection to the use of the word "hell" in the album title, or in reference to the track "G-Spot Tornado", describing the sexual area in human anatomy commonly known as the G-Spot.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main 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.