The Secret History - The World That Never Was - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Véronique Gens's version of La Voix humaine has been eagerly awaited! This 'lyric tragedy in one act' might have been written for her, so ideally suited are her feeling for language and her dramatic intensity to Poulenc's monologue on a text by Jean Cocteau, composed in 1958. This is a far cry from the 'light' Poulenc of the 1920s. Cocteau paid him the highest compliment 'Dear Francis, you have fixed, once and for all, the way to speak my text.' Véronique Gens confesses that she had always wanted to perform and record this piece; now she has achieved her ambition, in close partnership with the Orchestre National de Lille under it's music director Alexandre Bloch. Also featured on the album is the Sinfonietta this is in fact a genuine symphony, but, as Nicolas Southon writes, 'there is no denying that the work - commissioned by the BBC in 1947 - has a freshness and a freedom of tone that justify it's title'.

The elegance of howling guitar noise was fully realized when The Dead C appeared. For over twenty years now, the trio has continually redefined what rock music is and can sound like, and have inspired Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Wolf Eyes, and Comets on Fire, not to mention the current fertile underground noise scene. The Dead C is the ultimate Blues band. But rather than departing from the heartfelt singing of the African-American South, they express the tenants of alienation in society with unrelenting force, a focused soundtrack to accompany Knut Hamsun novels, Samuel Beckett plays, and Ingmar Bergman films. Michael Morley's monotonic vocal moan anchors the inherent isolation of our modern world.

Secret Stars - Genealogies [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/18/2000