Konstantin Raudive - Voices of the Dead (2002) [SAA Album Club discussion thread]
 

Konstantin Raudive - Voices of the Dead (2002)

This week we're discussing this interesting record recommended by OccultHawk:

****, forgot to ask for link.

can somebody send?

This CD is very suitable for listening to on high doses of mushrooms. I can see most of you placing this in the solid to very good range. A remix could spruce it I can imagine, I would like to see one experiemntal DJ tie the whole thing together perhaps without breaks between the tracks with more looping and echoes and extra sound effects and the like. Actually, I wouldn't mind taking a crack at it on Acid Pro myself. Since Burroughs wrote about these tapes it gives them a little extra push into the mystic and this is good work. Even though it's my suggestion I don't mind saying it could use a little more at times. Brett Dean's viola solo is easily the highlight of the CD even if it comes from a very different direction than the rest of the music.

I don't have one or I would, of course.

I only heard the start of it so far. Not that impressed though it certainly sounds weird. If it has long stretches of German through it that might test my patience as I don't understand it. Not sure they are actually voices of the dead either. :D Not that I don't have some consideration that there might be some form of 'spirit' life but taking that a step further into hearing voices is a bit of a further leap. Not that that should have any consideration in judging the music of course, though it might seem from the title that it is being sensationalist. And ultimately is it just trying to tap into those ghost cliches from horror films and legends by just trying to create a creepy sound instead of something more different? Can people manage to escape that when looking at this kind of subject or are we inevitably shaped by all the baggage that has built up over hundreds of years?

First couple songs, and thought it'd be difficult to get through, and it was for a bit, but it really sort of opened itself up as songs continued. The album itself really did seem to evolve from song to song.

With that said, it takes awhile to get there, and it doesn't get much beyond that. Still, very neat works. Unpredictable, formula breaking, and even with a nice random string piece thrown in as bonus.

I don't know, when I was listening to it, it didn't evoke horror films, more like sci-fi. It's actually refreshing that creepiness isn't so in your face, but almost like a byproduct of "scientific" research. The only track, that I can say tries to create some gothic environment by those slow, deep tones, is by Calla, 'Raudive Track'. Most of the others are actually quite cold in their approach, sound collages and experiments working around the founding concept of Raudive's recording of the "voices", injecting them with musicality. There's a sense of some hidden melancholy in some of them, which warms up the record, like in 'Nature Morte'. Some of them are quite mystic like 'Kolade Spirit' by David Toop and to a lesser extent those two electronic tracks: 'Bizz Circuits' (this one is one of my favorites) and 'Palae Fore Memoire' (this one really evokes the sci-fi feel I mentioned).

The best track is definitely 'Intimate Decision for Solo Viola' (I completely agree with OccultHawk here). Without it this would be a really cold record despite those occasional glimpses of warmth in some tracks. But this one makes up for it. It has some mysterious sadness and fatal foreboding perfect for the subject. Brett Dean injects this collection of sound experiments with much needed emotion and puts it in human context, pulls it down from the pseudo-scientific abstractions.

But still, I feel it's not enough to warm up the whole record which is somewhat tiring for listening at once, mainly because of that coldness, the result of experimental approach that tries to emulate to an extent Raudive's "scientific" approach. I must admit though, it's an interesting concept and it gets a solid mark.