mercredi 5 novembre 2014

review about KommaNull Split K7 from the Sound Projector

http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2014/07/20/kommanull/

Three Spooling Dans from France

Nicolas Marmin sent us three split cassette tapes from his KommaNull label in France which arrived 18 October 2013. Note the uniform packaging of these Spooling Dans. Each tape resides in a corrugated card carton which when flipped open will reveal the cassette in a paper slipcase within, the pearl of tapedom sitting in the oyster of the hypermarket. It so happens our first pearl (KOMMANULL SPLIT K7_3) is of pinkish hues...

Of greenish tint is our tertiary item (KOMMANULL SPLIT K7_1)…
Ravi Shardja (also associated with GOL and Oleo Strut) is another French musician who has come our way before with the double LP Grun Ist Grau for Grautag Records. While that item might have shown his industrial landscaping skills, his half of the split tape La Ferme Vous-Meme is apparently more of a cut-up sampling item, with a baffling jumble of instruments and voices producing a nightmarish version of modern pop music, with insane beats and ugly sounds wrought from guitars and synths. No less unpalatable are the distorted voices, sometimes screaming in agony from the harsh transformations they must undergo. Shardja makes his mixing board work overtime until you could cook a three-course meal on the overheated desk, and pushes his array of sounds to their utmost limits. The album may have its melodic moments, but these too are rendered quite bizarre (almost comical) by means of edits and juxtapositions. Even so, this is so far the most “entertaining” listen of the bunch. You could play it to someone who’s an expert in obscure Burmese movie soundtracks, and just watch their brows furrow as they try and name the tune.

samedi 10 mai 2014

Luc Ferrari - Tautologos 3 - GOL & Brunhild Ferrari - Collection PiedNu - CD - 2014




Tautologos III
de Luc Ferrari interprété par GOL et Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari.
Collection PiedNU- PN0114



Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari : « Mes amis GOL, vous plairait-il de Tautologuer avec moi ? »
GOL : « Oui très chère Brunhild » (d'une seule voix)

GOL, une formation de vapeur de lysergamide produite par le précipité des sons d’un bocal de nouilles électrifiées. C’est comme ça qu’ils cuisinent, sans faire attention, il y a toujours des taches sur le tapis, et ils remettent ça, ils ont apporté des objets plus ou moins homologués pour faire leur soupe, ça prend des couleurs non mentionnées dans le Pantone et à la fin on en redemande. Évidemment on ne sait jamais à quoi s’attendre.
Après une première "gollaboration" fructueuse et un disque sur le label Planam, la joyeuse troupe à la discipline douteuse s'est adjoint à nouveau pour cet enregistrement la surveillance salvatrice d’une maîtresse de choix en la personne de Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari, connue pour avoir des années durant canalisé les épanchements de génie de feu son compagnon de vie Luc Ferrari, compositeur de la partition en 1969, savoureuse année érotique.



TAUTOLOGOS III (1969) - 28’44”
Jean-Marcel Busson : électronique (Metacrackle, Luxonic), charango
Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari : voix, carton raclé
Frédéric Rebotier : voix, clarinette, boite à bonbons, papier déchiré
Ravi Shardja : basse, mandoline électrique, flûte traversière, sanza



HAVRESAC (2012) - 16’23”
Jean-Marcel Busson : électronique (Metacrackle, Luxonic)
Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari : voix
Frédéric Rebotier : cymbales, voix, objets, électronique
Ravi Shardja : électronique, basse, cordes vocales



Enregistré les 22 et 23 septembre 2012 au studio Honolulu / Le Havre
Enregistrement et mastering : Emmanuel Lalande
Mixage : Xavier Roux
Pochette : Samon Takahashi
Production L’Ecole Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen












vendredi 4 avril 2014

Review about "Grün ist grau" from Sound Projector written by Nausika march 2014

Grün ist grau: green gets ground out on this post-industrial dystopian music travelogue




Ravi Shardja, Grün ist grau, Grautag Records, 2 x LP GTR#005 (2013)
Aye aye, Captain Shardja … green is grey according to this French improv musician who has been let loose on a bewildering variety of instruments here: electronic bass, guitar, mandolin, various hand-me-down synthesisers, a broken-down Yamaha mixing table and other musical and non-musical gadgets of varying ages and music-worthy (or unworthy) condition, to create monumental audioscapes of noisy post-industrial improv. Fear not! – the result is a travelogue through dystopian post-apocalyptic soundscapes where steel skyscrapers and other monuments to the Age of Oil now lie in ruins and are over-run by Nature exacting her due on presumptuous humanity, now long gone. While the mood of the album isn’t bleak or hopeless, the general feeling tends to be one of clinical curiosity, as if listeners have been invited as disinterested tourists to survey this devastated world as a lesson in not what to do before travelling to the next planet.
On the four tracks, each of which gets a 12-inch vinyl-platter side to itself, Shardja surveys a different part of the post-anthropic Earth: one track might pass for a quick lookaround of India, to judge from the presence of a sitar (courtesy of Jean Marcel Busson whom Shardja roped in from their band GOL to assist) which appears at various points throughout the track. The music can be dramatic in parts but it’s generally approachable and light in tone and delivery. There is sometimes a playful quality and even the most doom-laden sections never sound really very heavy or morose. The mood sometimes seems quite wry and deliberately down-played, the music appearing very po-faced at what it may be observing.
Track titles range from the absurd and amusing like “Bombay Boobies Battle” to the deeply disturbing like “Attaque sournoise du Kopassus a Wamena” (“Sneak Attack by Kopassus on Wamena”), the latter covering some sinister spoken-voice field recordings as well as some toy-box melodies that seem quite out of order here. While the music on this track can be quite jaunty in parts and becomes shrill and intense in its final moments, listeners should be aware that Kopassus refers to a crack special forces unit in the Indonesian Army that conducts unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism and special intelligence gathering activities and as such has committed human rights violations in various parts of Indonesia including Papua where Wamena is a major town. Why Shardja should give this piece such a startling title I’m curious to know: is he trying to stir up listeners’ jaded sensibilities, dulled by always expecting to be entertained by one short-lived thrill after another, or is he merely commenting in a casual, almost noncommittal way on one aspect of the chaos and almost banal repression and violence that always seem to break out in at least one corner of the globe every so often? (This would assume that human violence is something that happens because … hey, it’s human nature to be brutal and violent and we just have to live with it. Move on folks, nothing to see here. The notion that violence of a brutal and vicious kind is something we are taught through our total and involuntary immersion in modern Western culture from the moment of our birth never occurs to people.) Whether the listener can be bothered to find out what messages or non-messages Shardja is trying to convey with the various track titles (given in English, French, German and Italian) and the music they attach to is another thing altogether. At the very least, it’s disturbing that we have a track called “Attaque sournoise …” with no further explication from the artist (I admit I don’t have the actual double LP artwork which might explain a lot more in front of me) which leaves me as a listener guessing at what Shardja’s intentions may be – but possibly the fact that I have to guess may be the intention itself: it at least has roused my curiosity and interest.
Some passages in the four tracks can be very intriguing and enjoyable to listen to but on the whole this quartet can be something of an endurance test and attention levels can flag very quickly. This double LP set is perhaps best digested in separate chunks. Each track could almost be substituted for one another and you would not notice much difference. I feel a bit debilitated each time I listen to the album and I think that’s due to the dabbling and dallying out stretched out to an interminable length.

Nausika (Sound Projector)
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2014/03/08/grun-ist-grau/
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jeudi 16 janvier 2014

ITV RAVI SHARDJA BY D.L.K CHAIN JULY 2013

Xavier Roux, better known as Ravi Shardja, is a composer of music for films and theatre. He recently poured his art into the boiling aesthetic  cauldron of Grautag Records, which is building a collection of music about the dystopian landscapes of our globalised world, whose programmed obsolescence where dreams have nothing to share with illusion any more.  On his “Grun ist Grau“, Ravi Shardja intertwines hints coming from this “black and white” world in the middle of jungles where tourists don’t dare to go for endless conflicts, where you can find yourself sleeping inside the wreck of an abandoned airplane, eat kebab leeches you managed to find in a garbage dump, while malaria buzzing insects gradually eats you. Is it future or present? In the meanwhile, let’s know Ravi better. “Grun ist Grau” comes out on Grautag Records.


Chain D.L.K.: Hi Ravi. How are you?
Ravi Shardja:   Great yesterday, today,  and tomorrow i don’t know, and you what’s up Doc ?

Chain D.L.K.: En la Lucha, thanks. Compliments for your last release on Grautag. It sounds a synaesthesia related to forgotten and somewhat invisible places. First of all, how did you discovered Grautag?
Ravi Shardja:  Thanks. A good and close friend, Philippe Cuxac, who works with Nicolas Moulin gave me the first LP of the Grautag collection, « Bader Motor ». So after meeting with Nicolas, we swap several LPs from our own labels. One day he proposed me to do the next double LP. I was a lucky man.


Chain D.L.K.: In the past, electronic noise was more associated to provocative messages or entertainement, nowadays it’s more related to different descriptions of a confused and grey interzones of reality. Do you agree or not?
Ravi Shardja:  I agree with a part of the question/analysis. Nowadays, it seems to me that this kind of music acts more on the cortex than in the time. The current techniques of sound allow to work its sculpture in a very precise way. Noise music is old now, in the 80′ we especially heard white and pink noise, and larsen, it often was to associate with pictures of torture and violence, all this dark imaging. Nowadays there are several types and varieties of this music. In this musical current certain musicians work more on the physical limits while others prefer to modify the shape of the brain.

Chain D.L.K.: How do you file your sonic research?
Ravi Shardja:  It’s a daily and permanent research like a revolution it always has to be in movement, doesn’t follow the fashion, never has to give itself limits of shapes and instrumentation. I can not and i do not want file it in a box . That I can assert it is that every acoustic pressure can show itself an interesting and usable element and wether it is emitted by an object of the everyday life, a musical instrument, or wether it is electricity, electronic or acoustic.



Chain D.L.K.: Let’s examine in depth your “Grun ist Grau”. Can you tell us something about its birth?
Ravi Shardja:   As soon as Nicolas proposed to me to realize the continuation of the Grautag collection i set to work, and the « Bombay Boobies Battle » track arrived very prematurely. But it was only the beginning and the way was long to close this project, A double LP asks for a lot of energy, resources to find the just balance between every record and every side.

Chain D.L.K.: The electronic buzzes and distorted guitars of the initial “Bombay Boobies Battle” sound abrasive, gunky and unravelling. How did you manage to render this kind of sound? What’s the “function” of it within the track?
Ravi Shardja: This is not electric guitar but electric mandolin. Sorry i never give my recipes and secrets of research, but what i can say about it is that the rhythmic part and the mandolin were recorded in one shot on DAT, that sounded so much although I danced alone as a happy idiot and I knew that I had the essence of the piece. This combination between the electronic rythm and the gimmick of mandolin gives this strange groove and this stretching of the tempo, it is the vertebral column of the piece, a little twisted as mine.

Chain D.L.K.:What’s the source for inspiration of “Gartnefest Fessenheim abgesagt”?
Ravi Shardja: I imagined the life of people who work in a nuclear power plant. I said to myself that he had to have a works council there which organizes from time to time a party for the staff. But unfortunately that this is cancelled and the epilogue of the piece leads to predict an irreparable disaster and the music stop, the garden party is over. The nuclear power plant of Fessenheim in east of the France is obsolete and present a real danger for the surrounding populations, it is one truth time bomb. Our German and Swiss neighbors are very worried about it and militate they ask its activity stops, but the French people quietly sleep on their two ears do not look worried. maybe together we shall listen to this piece of music blocked for life in a bunker.

Chain D.L.K.: Your four pieces have titles in four different languages (English, Italian, French and German). Is it somewhat related to experiences in different sociolinguistic settings or is there any other explanation of such a choice?
Ravi Shardja:  I found that sounded well in differents languages. and maybe it comes from my difficulty expressing me in other languages which mine, I try to domesticate them but the result is not still convincing. However I find that every language has singular sounds and evoke something special, it is rather this aspect there that it is necessary to keep, and then the diversity that makes the good, enough these titles only in English everywhere, the next time I shall choose titles in Papuan vernacular dialects.

Chain D.L.K.: Your music could evoke some visionary pieces of literature from writers such as William S.Burroughs or Thomas Pynchon between a wild-eyed and pitiless representation of reality, just like having a walk under the effect of hallucinatory mushrooms in the meanders of an Indian peripherical garbage dump…do you think such a relation is proper or not? Are there any references to books or movies in your record? Do you suggest any book or movie which could integrate or enhance the listening of “Grun ist Grau”?
Ravi Shardja:   Not of direct relations with books or existing movies but influences undoubtedly, and indelible tracks of old experiences with psychotropics. I believe that I am made my own movie, as each of us. Every piece has its story and its temporality, but every listener gives its version. I compose musics of movies, documentaries, my music has a very narrow relation with the image, but in this project it passes only by ears. The magnificent work of Nicolas Moulin’s photos for this record suits well to my vision of things, we could even imagine four movies. For the title “Curry Negli Occhi, un’ acromatopsia momentanea” I evoke the colour blindness, this genetic disease which reduces the vision to black and white, this title came to me after the reading of Oliver Saks’s book ” The Island of the color blind “, but the idea of the title arrived after the construction of the track. ” Grün ist grau ” it is a little a vision of colour blindness with all its nuances of grey, but it is not also simple as it .



Chain D.L.K.: Do you think sonic research could have a social function in a way or another?
Ravi Shardja:  Maybe one day it will be an obvious fact for all that this sound empirical research it is not only the music, but for it we would have to consider that the hearing is of our most complex senses. I have the impression that in time we manage to invent a role in the decoration. When a person gives me a return onto my work, I say to myself that I can have a small function in the society other than to distract people.

Chain D.L.K.: What’s the main problem which obstacle the understanding and the spreading of more experimental musics?
Ravi Shardja:   It is obvious it is not easy to appreciate these musics that asks for an effort, it is idem for all the new shapes, they meet many reluctances on behalf of people, to see of the rejection, the way of the acceptance is long. There are broadcastings, distribution networks, but it is necessary to admit that the public is not so many, that remains confidential with regard to the billions of individuals who populate the planet. I have the feeling, in France in any case, that the public lack of curiosity, we are doubtless dulled, it’s a pity because France counts many good composers and musicians but ignored, always the same story. The sinews of war it is certainly the distribution how better to organize all this? There are composers, labels, distributors, but that misses link between us all.

Chain D.L.K.: You’re also member of other projects (GOL, and Oleo Strut). Could you tell us more about them?
Ravi Shardja: Gol is very important for me, as much on the musical side as human being, it is my family. we are very close with Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, and Samon Takahashi we began at the end of the 80s. We developed together a spirit of play, a language « GOL ». Our first album went out in 1994, with many of cut up, of turntables. Since we shared musical adventures with Iancu Dumitrescu, Charles Hayward, Charlemagne Palestine, Brunhild Ferrari, Dave Nuss, Mik Quantius, Ghédalia Tazartès. Two members of Gol participate in ” Grün ist grau “. It is one of the most free musics which I know, we still have things to be together told it is wonderful for almost 20 years. We have some records which way out soon on the Emanuele Carcano’s label Planam, and on Gol our own label.
Oleo Strut is a project of French and Italian musicians both since 2005, we share the taste of good italian noodles and red wine. We find there essentially Aka Bondage, Jerôme Florenville, Xabier Iriondo, and Roberto Bertacchini, but other musicians have participated in this variable-geometry project in the past. We regularly see each other little but, our music meeting is always very funny, absurd, and effective. We way out the third record next month. Roberto is a drummer in the atypical and asymmetric play and in more he sings better than the Pope.

Chain D.L.K.: Is there any linking bridge between your collaborative and solo projects?
Ravi Shardja:  No. I really separate everything, I make the distingo, otherwise has sense neither for me nor for the others. I do not want to find the same materials the same melodies. Of course every project feeds me and me made mature.

Chain D.L.K.: I’ve read your album was mastered by Norsq, one of the most talented living noiseshaper in my opinion. What can you say abouth working with Norsq?
Ravi Shardja: Yes… Norscq has the qualities wished to be the person of the situation. He possesses two sharpened ears and a culture of these musics. They are rather rare the good technicians of the sound. He asks himself the good questions about the sound, I do not return him easy things, we speak a lot before, he works then. We understand well.

Chain D.L.K.: You used a plenty of instruments. Is there any of them you particularly love? Why?
Ravi Shardja: I like very much the bass, I feel rather comfortable to express myself, it is as an extension of my arms of gibbon. I use it more there live than in studio. The prepared turntable comes then, the circular movement makes me crazy, the sound and the subtain of the tray. I also play the traverse flute of South India and then and then I love them all these instruments in fact, and I don’t know why!

Chain D.L.K.: Have you planned any live performances of “Grun ist Grau”?
Ravi Shardja: I have a date in Paris on May 4th, I wait for a confirmation for new Graunacht of the label in June in Lille, I intend to return in Berlin, and also Brussels. I will go in south of Europe later.

Chain D.L.K.: Any work in progress?
Ravi Shardja: Yes indeed and always, I work a lot, I prepare new records on my label Suara. Between Gol, Oleo Strut and my solo project, there are seven records which go out, an attractive harvest in perspective.

visit Ravi Shardja’s Soundcloud at: soundcloud.com/ravi-shardja

oirinal ITV here http://www.chaindlk.com/interviews/ravi-shardja/

RAVI SHARDJA - GRÜN IST GRAU - GRAUTAG RECORDS - CHRONIQUE RIF RAF

RAVI SHARDJA - GRÜN IST GRAU - GRAUTAG RECORDS -  

RIF RAF N° 190 Mai 2013



RAVI SHARDJA - GRÜN IST GRAU - GRAUTAG RECORDS - CRONACA GIONARLISTICA BLOW UP

BLOW UP N° 180 - Maggio 2013


RAVI SHARDJA "WEST PAPUA BOX & "KOMANDO PAPUA 2 " CD - CHRONIQUE TRAX


TRAX N°162 - Février 2013


OLEO STRUT "Non vogliamo un paradiso" SUARA & KommaNull / Chroniques ( Français, english, italiano) Revue & Corrigé, Wire, Sandzine

 OLEO STRUT "Non vogliamo un paradiso" SUARA & KommaNull  10'




 Revue & Corrigé n°82, janvier 2014
"Et l’on termine avec mon disque préféré de la collection Komma Null avec le Quintet OLEO STRUT. Il réunit Ravi Shardja, Roberto Bertacchini, Aka_Bondage, Xavier Iriondo et Jérôme Florenville. Je ne sais pas si c’est l’influence italienne, mais il y a du Gustoforte sur ce 10 pouces. Je ne peux m’empêcher non plus de penser au quartet avec entre autres David Fenech, Popewaffen, sur Corvo records. Un jazz rock froid, fait de collages, de séquences répétées très courtes, de chants susurrés ou criés, presque japonisant. Allant dans des excursions noise avec “Mais tout est jaune”. Conceptuel sans vouloir s’en donner les prétentions, arty sans les habits, plaintif dans le chant de “La galleria dell’ ignoranza” avec le cœur et les poumons. Voire post-rock quand il le veut. Se révèle très complet ce disque, tout comme le catalogue de Komma Null, et tout comme cette chronique interminable.

Cyrille Lanoë




THE WIRE, December 2013
Beautifully sputsy effort by a Franco-Italian quintet with members of Starfuckers, Polvere and other free rock immortals. Completely post-tongue in style, this has a lot of crazed vocals and electroacoustic assemblages that teeter like the clumsiest structure imaginable. Rock highlighting comes from random loud guitar chords and great pleasure points are deeply touched. Gorgeous silkscreened package as well."

 Byron Coley





SANDZINE - Dicembre 2013
«Mors tua vita mea», dicevano i soliti romani (ma quante ne hanno dette e/o fatte ‘sti buzzurri), e lo stesso possono dire Iriondo & Co che, a distanza di un solo anno dal “Bunga Bunga”, non solo non vengono dimissionati, ma se ne escono addirittura con un provvidenziale EP pubblicato su vinile in un 10 pollici (provvidenziale anche per me, che in tal modo mi trovo a recensire materiale uscito più di recente). La solita musica espansa, le solita idea di fluido ininterrotto, che però trova una parziale sistemazione nella suddivisione in 7 brani. Prendo spunto da uno di questi che gioca con una traduzione, in italiano benigniolo, del nome Oleo Strut ed esattamente Olio di strutto (oleo strut in realtà si traduce con ‘oleo puntone’ e si tratta di un sistema d’ammortizzazione per mezzi pesanti, roba tipo treni o aerei…). Bene…. invece di ‘olio di strutto’ avrebbero dovuto scrivere ‘olio distrutto’, tanta è la loro capacità di triturare la materia per rilegarla poi attraverso prestigiosi giochi di surrealistica provenienza (avete presente il ‘cadavre exquisi’). In poche parole gli Oleo Strut confermano le prestazioni precedenti, addirittura le migliorano, e non è detto che non possano trasformarsi da progetto parassita in progetto parassitato. Splendida la confezione che, essendo le copie dipinte una ad una, è fortunatamente in edizione limitata alle 200 copie."

 Fragolona Da Todi

K7 Split Ravi Shardja / Enregistrement temporaire chronique Revue & Corrigé

 Revue & Corrigé n°82, Janvier 2014;



K7 Split Ravi Shardja / Enregistrement temporaire
Label KommaNull


"Et cette première split k7 me permet de me rattraper sur le compte de Ravi SHARDJA et j’en suis bien content. N’ayant pas trop compris où il voulait en venir avec son double vinyle sur Grautag, je le retrouve ici dans ce qu’il sait faire de mieux. Une electronica bancale psychédélique, trip hop aux collages jazzy me rappelant Mr Quark, voire même Sporto Kantes. Une post-production très dub. Une entrée en matière à siroter des cocktails légers, en tendant l’oreille et se demander d’où vient ce (bon) son. Il y a du Adrian Sherwood parfois dans la composition je trouve, et parfois même l’envie douce d’en découdre avec le noise lo-fi. Très chouette et très frais. Et qui se révélera un peu à part dans la collection."

Cyrille Lanoë -