Speaking of industrial music, that genre might've become infamous in some respects for overusing Holocaust tropes - but on the second suite here, Osweicim, Szajner was coming from a place of genuine familial suffering. His Jewish parents managed to keep themselves and baby Bernard hidden during WWII, but his uncle Moszek "disappeared in Auschwitz". The sonic output of this remembrance is ghostly, shimmering dark ambience. After the album proper, this reissue adds a couple of brighter (but still minor-key) tracks recorded a year later - the subtle synth sequencing on Inverted Area is particularly good.
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pw: sgtg
Weird reminiscences and trajectories with this. I remember back in the day (like, WAY back in the day, not long after this first came out) of him being on my radar, and occasionally seeing his stuff in stores, but it always being a case of "if I have enough money left over, then I'll get that too", and he never quite made the cut.
ReplyDeleteAnd now here we are, 40 years later, and it sits by the side of the road, for free, on the vast highway that is the internet. So now I'll finally hear it. What a long, strange route it's been to get there.
Huh, I wonder if the science fiction novel was =Nova= by Samuel R Delany. One of the characters (Mouse) plays a "sensory syrinx" (spelling approximate; I'm pulling this out of my damaged memory). He sits and plays it like a harp, and there is a scene where someone uses it as a weapon, very like a laser. Anyway.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, thanks!
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