U n v a n i t y C a s e S i n g l e s S e r i e s

Z o d i a k F r e e A r t s L a b

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 10:49] 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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{Note by P.S.P. -

U N V A N I T Y
C A S E
S I N G L E S
S E R I E S,

Eight releases that portray, among many glimpsed, a Melgacian sonorous fantastical microcosm.

Symphony, suite, sonata, cantata, pastoral, madrigal, sarabanda, fantasia, fugue, rhapsody, capriccio, passacaglia, berceuse, tombeau, lied, concertino, gimnopedia, oratorio, mass, operetta, opera ... are customary part of the compositional vocabulary of Otacílio Melgaço. Here and now we come in contact with other perspectives (with one or two exceptions) that are beyond the frontiers of modern classical genre. Extrapolations already contained in several albums produced by him and which are also treasures of his vast discography but never before gathered in a Series.

An image full of perspicacity when we think of a portable ´compendium´ of quite personal complementary aesthetic man-made objects (and here I´m referring to the adaptation of the term by Mr. Melgaço), the Vanity Case is a small handbag used for carrying cosmetics or toiletries.

Unvanity Case (Singles Series). It´s possible to perceive at least two fundamentals embedded in the O.M. wordplay. There´s the properly denial of ´vanity´ (the dictionarist meaning: excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements; the quality of being worthless or futile. So he invents a neologism to reveal this clear denudation) and also the symbolist recognition of artifacts gathered in the same casing as is the special case, for example and in addition to others, of a mirror.

In a fashion, the message that the composer and multi-instrumentalist conveys to us is clear:

He looks at himself, limpidly. Something a great artist is often doing. Yes, paradoxically, Melgaço does not give up (peer through the subsequent figures of speech) ´cosmetic & toiletry´ elements of music (timbres, harmonies, durations, pauses, melodies, dynamics, rhythms, pitches, articulations, textures, technicalities, arrangements, mixes, masterings ...) and, consequently (as expected and desired): he shows himself to us. Something that often a great artist should do with transparency and, of course, a certain mystery. Another paradox. He shows himself to us just as in Greek tragedy/comedy, the Mask (again: ´cosmetic & toiletry´) does not hide: it brings even more to light who the character is.

And, resuming the title exegesis, reflecting on the portable character: in the condition of ´perpetuum mobile´, every EP brings us to a peculiar place (situated in some historical snapshot) in one of the four corners of the world or even orbiting the planet earth. This conceptual ballast, therefore, is a mention of travels and journeys and trips and gigs (and rays and twinkles) and sagas perpetrated by the artist. I draw attention to the fact that the relationship between the niche itself and the respective musical proposal is direct, bright. ´Moto perpetuo´ as much as the experiments with his music as being a restless, challenger creator - who takes risks in constant search and daring -. Creator in its integrity/fragmentation, complexity/plainness; O.M.: an ontological mosaic, a kaleidoscope in person always in displacement and in our direction, provoking us but, I have no doubt, in humanistic celebration. This, citing only one of the facets of an Art-in-Magnification as is the Melgacian.

´Everything is metaphor´, Otacílio usually utters. And when we realize the polysemous richness of his inventions (nor need I say that the vocable 'case' is equally read as ´an instance of a particular situation; an example of something occurring´), we can conclude how absolutely everything that the/this artist plays can be an exciting, constructive and Graceful fluxuosity. Through the looking glass, the reflector, the speculum! And who inhabits the other side of the mirror?

Eight times,
the response that - hitherto - echoes eight times,
Ladies and Gentlemen, is:
E a c h O n e O f U s.}

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"O f T h e S e v e n (Z o d i a c a l) S e a l s

1 - The Zodiak Free Arts Lab, sometimes known as the ´Zodiak or Zodiac Club´, was a short-lived but highly influential experimental live music venue, founded in the then West Berlin in late 1969 by German artists/musicians Conrad Schnitzler (1937–2011) and Hans-Joachim Roedelius (born 1934), together with Boris Schaak (1942–2012);

2 - ZFAL played an important role in the development of a style of music that would later be called Krautrock;

3 - Krautrock is a broad genre of experimental rock that developed in Germany in the late 1960s. The term was originated by English-speaking music journalists as a humorous name for a diverse range of German bands whose music drew from sources such as psychedelic rock, avant-garde electronic music, funk, minimalism, jazz improvisation, and world music styles. Largely divorced from the traditional blues and rock and roll influences of British and American rock music up to that time, the period contributed to the evolution of electronic music and ambient music as well as the birth of post-punk, alternative rock and new-age music;

4 - The present single by Otacílio Melgaço that inaugurates its series, represents this genus? Purposely yes and no.

Yes - as it incorporates some of its constituent elements (the use of the flute in the first half - which embraces hypnotic ambiences and can be a quote to Florian Schneider-Esleben plus the genesiac phase of Kraftwerk -; the punctual emergence of the camouflaged distorted guitar; some emblematic timbristic effects etc.;

No - when he decidedly makes remarkable extrapolations, directing his sonic Piece to other horizons (that do not fit even in the concept of ´world music´ because what I presume Brazilianness in his offspring, goes beyond any labeling, stereotype, folklore, revisionism and so on);

[Addendum: it´s worth noting that both the ´krautrock´ denomination and ´world music´ seem to me to be inadequate, either because the first one sounds caricaturesque (´kraut´ means ´sauerkraut, coleslaw´) and the second - by the power of mass industry - recognizes something like ´my (imposed) culture´ (ordinarily under American aegis) and, on the banks: ´the rest´. So it's ´them´ and ... ´the rest of the world´. Both aspects are altogether regrettable. Such ´etiquettes´ were used here only for a more direct public understanding.]

Yes - in so far as experimentation and psychedelia mate instigatingly here (magnetized by - mentioned - improvisation, minimalism, avant-garde prisms, electronic interpositions ...);

No - if the insertion of voices that sometimes report us to operatic references; specific brass interventions; rhythms that can be understood as ´rock´ but simultaneously suggest a group of Brazilian percussion (as a drumming section of Samba School), ... are instances of a detachment that already remove the anchor of an offspring immediately detectable in terms of such style;

5 - Therefore, nothing more Melgacian than that.

It is krautrock but it's not. It is but it´s an otherness.

There are the positive jotting. However, you should observe that the reasons that my negative arguments declare are a intended distancing from that germanised musical modality (which, a propos, Melgaço very much admires but his proposition is not to serve as a ´belly for rent´ to what is categorized, as we well know). In contrast the justifications of the negatives bring his composition closer to the ´zustand des geistes´ that more conjuncturally reigned in the ZFAL! Ladies and Gentlemen, another Melgacian ace up one’s sleeve, I think;

6 - Besides, I feel a very interesting duality when I hear ´Zodiak Free Arts Lab´. On the one hand, for me Otacílio Melgaço becomes Fitzcarraldo!

[Fitzcarraldo is a 1982 West German surreal adventure-drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski as the title character. It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon Basin. The film is derived from the historic events of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald. He has an indomitable spirit, but is little more than a dreamer with one major failure already behind him – the bankrupted and incomplete Trans-Andean railways. A lover of opera and a great fan of the internationally known Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, he dreams of building an opera house in Iquitos. So, I repeat: an opera in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.]

Yes, when I hear lyrical voices that sometimes seem to me to intonate indigenous chants & (chiefly) shouts (all framed by singularly primal percussive beats), it´s impossible not to situate myself in this ´flamboyant´ situation. The way Melgaço, at my point of view, translated such monumental dream (or something very very similar) into music, is fabulous. A primitivist sense however as a magical realism. On the other hand, there´s a teleological substantialness and even apocalyptic (in the most apotheotic acception) about this confluence of Dionysian expressionisms!;

7 - A curiosity. Otacílio commented to me that he would like to treat the single so that it sounded as if it were ´a bootleg, a live pirate record made in the late 1960s (or until the mid-1970s)´. Undoubtedly he succeeded. And I asked him,´But why?´ - somehow, I already knew the answer, but he always surprises me -. It was no exception. O.M. said: ´It´s not only a matter of atmosphericity, a rescue of specific transpositional sensations - if I idealize the teleportation of my composition to the Zodiak Club -. It goes beyond that. I find it sensual to regard Art as an incomparable kind of Time Machine and thus to presentiate (what is usually called) the past or the future or both concomitantly (or all three because there´s still the present-of-present): ... in the end, all this becomes an act almost involuntary to the creator. Time is Scolopendra.´

On behalf of our privileged fate, ´Unvanity Case Singles Series´ too." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"There are two approaches suggested by the title of this work that I could not fail to point out. One, quite direct. Another, belonging to the visceras of the musical niche.

The Zodiac is the circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude employed by western astrology and (formerly) astronomy. The western zodiac is centered upon the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets also remain close to the ecliptic, within the belt of the zodiac, which extends 8-9° north or south of the ecliptic, as measured in celestial latitude. Because the divisions are regular, they do not correspond exactly to the boundaries of the twelve constellations after which they are named. Historically, these twelve divisions are called signs. Essentially, the zodiac is a celestial coordinate system, or more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude, and the position of the Sun at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude.

>>I suspect that we´re face to face with a system of structural compositional coordinates that do a certain parallel to the concept above.<<

Tierkreis (´Zodiac´ in German), a composition for 12 music boxes by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

>>I believe there are analog details. This is quite likely if we consider some eventual points in common between Melgaço and the composer born in Mödrath, just as indelible the Stockhausenian influence if we focus on krautrock and other expressions that were listened in the Zodiak.<<

In one way or another, the remaining words (´Free Arts Lab´) very well represent the perspectives of Otacílio: fluidic freedom, supreme artisticity/artistry, and the ´alchemy´ of creation as, accordingly, an unbounded laboratory." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - The Zodiak Free Arts Lab was based in a large rented backroom area within a building in Hallesches Ufer, along the north bank of the Landwehr Canal in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, near the corner of Großbeerenstraße. The main purpose of this building from 1962 until 1981 was as the first home of the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer (de), a politically inspired and motivated theatre company. Hence, the Zodiak could not open until late in the evening after the theatre itself had closed, so that the theatrical performances would not be drowned out by the noise.

The Zodiak itself was sub-divided into two main performance areas, one of which was painted completely white and the other completely black, and was filled with all kinds of instruments, amplifiers and speakers which people could more or less do with as they pleased. Here, musicians were allowed to experiment with free jazz, psychedelic rock and avant-garde styles. Conventional forms of music were frowned upon: a phrase frequently used to describe the spirit of the times was that "songs were considered bourgeois";

II - Among the many artists and bands who passed through the Zodiak in their early days were Ash Ra Tempel, Geräusche (Noises), Plus/Minus, Curly Curve (de), Per Sonore, Human Being, The Agitation (later Agitation Free), Klaus Schulze and, most significantly, Tangerine Dream. While not quite reaching the status of being "house band," Tangerine Dream certainly played there frequently over a 3-month period, sometimes for five or six hours a night and for little or no payment, and the loud, iconoclastic improvised music sometimes climaxed with Who-style destruction of equipment.

Whether due to the Schaubühne's management calling for things to be toned down, or the restlessness of the West Berlin scene simply seeking other outlets for expression, has not been recorded, but the Zodiak lasted only a few months, closing in early 1969. Nevertheless, it earned a significant place in German rock history and is fondly remembered by all who were associated with it. In 1969 one of its founders, Conrad Schnitzler, joined Tangerine Dream for a while, playing on their first album, Electronic Meditation, released in 1970. After leaving Tangerine Dream, Schnitzler rejoined one of the Zodiak's other founders, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, together with Dieter Moebius (born 1944), and formed his own band, Kluster (name later anglicised to Cluster);

III - As for the building that once housed the Zodiak: in 1981 the Schaubühne relocated to its present home in a former cinema (the Kino Universum, designed by architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1926), in Lehniner Platz, along the Kurfürstendamm. Its old home then became the Theater am Halleschen Ufer (de). Today it is one of two additional venues complementing the Hebbel Theater (de) nearby in Stresemannstraße; specifically it is now known as "Hebbel am Ufer 2" or "HAU 2";

IV - A Samba School (Portuguese: Escola de samba) is a club or dancing school. They practice and often perform in huge square-compounds ("quadras de samba") devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an African-Brazilian dance.

...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.