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"HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
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a r t i s t : Hardscore
t i t l e : Methane
d a t e : 1998
l a b e l : CARBON 7 - C7-035
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : nov/2004
t r a c k s : 15
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 92,6 MB
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Tracks 1 - 5 Hard Scores BOOK 2
Tracks 6 - 15 Hard Scores BOOK 3
We have talked with Frank Nuyts the leader of the Belgian band
Hardscore....
1) I would like to start from the beginning, in order to give
our readers a good framework. Could you please tell us
something about yourself, your early interests and how did you
get involved in music? When and why did you choose tuned
percussion as one of your main instruments?
I started to study professionally music as a kind of substitute
for another of my early passions, namely drawing comics. Almost
accidentally I made the unexpected choice to quit drawing
(feeling I would never be good enough to attain the standards I
demanded from other people). Playing piano was a must in my
home, and although I hated it, I must say it now feels for me
the instrument which comes closest to my heart, even after
having been for many years a teacher of percussion for young
professionals. Like everything in my musical career it turned
out that without really knowing or willing it I was pretty good
in playing the marimba and vibraphone. I started to compose for
those instruments, mainly because only playing music of other
people bored me.. Then I played those self-composed pieces and
people saw me as a kind of wizard on those instruments. The
only results were that I got hooked on composing which became
my main activity until now.
2) When listening to Hardscore music, a Frank Zappa flavour
seems to be present here and there. Was he an influence to you?
Which were your main musical influences? Were 70's progressive
bands one of them?
The funny thing is that we never listened to the radio at home.
My father had rather early on decided that nobody after the
second world war could sing.. Why bother to listen to the radio
then?
But once I started to study music in the conservatory of Ghent
I felt it my duty to inform me what had happened in the 20th
century. And for three years I listened like an obsessed maniac
to everything which was produced in the realm of contemporary
classics. I think I listened to a couple of thousand LP's,
which in some way or another, I managed to stock in my brain.
Most of those works are still sounding there.
And yes one day I discovered Zappa which I immediately liked
very much. I knew then already VarΦse very well. I had already
discovered really everything of Strawinsky, and the odd
combination of blues, Americana, VarΦse and Strawinsky, larded
with a ravaging kind of humour in Zappa's own music started in
me the wish to do one day something equally unheard of,
although I knew the mix would be completely different. I don't
play the guitar, so rock and roll would never have that deep
influence on my music, but for being a drummer too, I
discovered one day the art of drumming of Stewart Copeland, and
this kind of white reggae opened the door to areas of my
imagination which would never have been opened without this
encounter.
3) How and why did you decide to create Hardscore? Did you have
any previous experience playing in a progressive/chamber rock
group?
I always formed and disbanded groups. Everytime I wrote a work
for some weird combination I started to look for people to play
those things begged other composers to write for this
combination and sought possibilities to perform them. Some of
these groups existed for some time, others split after one
concert, but my wish to seek non standard instrumental
combinations never faded. It's still so: I just wrote a kind of
dance theatre opera piece, for eleven singers dancers, a
clarinet, a bass clarinet, marimba, piano and percussion. We
will tour with this piece for some time. But there again, it
was my sound imagination which drove me to choose this
combination, which I never heard before... So once we'll stop
this production, this kind of band will disappear too...
4) I know that is a difficult and, usually, a barren task, but
could you please try to describe your music to our readers?
Could you tell us something about each one of your records and
how your music evolved from "Tubes for Sections" to "Surf, wind
and desire"?
Like I already said, my main influences come from non
commercial music. But I felt that no classical composer can
ignore the fact that commercial and somewhat less commercial
music is the equivalent of folk music of the past. One cannot
ignore the fact that what one hears on the radio is the only
kind of music what billions of people think as "music".
Stockhausen and Boulez and Xenakis, or Dusapin or Adams or
Ferneyhough now might be the uncrowned kings of the classical
contemporary scene, but who listens to them?. Even Berg or
Schoenberg and Strawinsky are famous in only small circles.
Most high art is, but I felt that there must be at least a
serious try to link the overall music of this world to the
thinking behind these less accessible soundworlds. So in
Hardscore I refused to have a "taste". When I found that
something "worked" in the specifically context of a Hardscore
song, I went for it, well knowing that most people would be at
a loss. But that's now just the way my mind's working. I feel
there is fair amount of Zeitgeist to be seen and to be heard
between apparently very different art forms which took form for
example in the same period of history, but were until now
considered as antipodes.
Between Minimal music and Tangerine dream, most people can hear
the connection. But the rise of sampling in commercial music is
equally to be seen in most hardcore postmodern classical
orchestral works, in the form of free and unlimited use of
things past.
As a classical composer I tried to impose a kind of "single"
(meaning the record) feel in my pieces. To tell my story in
three minutes and a half in stead of the regular half hour of a
symphonic work was a real challenge.
Now I feel that most young starting composers do this kind of
thing much more easily than me and even better, so the only way
I could compete is to show them how to compose huge
conceptional pieces, without dumping the "single" feel.
In the coming record "Monkey trial" I reached something I think
which shall be for me rather difficult to surpass. Monkey trail
is a concept of 70 minutes, longer than a Mahler symphony, but
without any of the usual tricks of the classical trade. No
development whatever, only constant zapping and focussing into
what passed my inner ear. It's demanding music, but why should
music always have to be something to be consumed almost
unintentional? I demand that listening is a powerful act of
will, which is not only guided by emotional needs. Using one's
brain while listening to sound is too often condemned, and by
being done so, it became for me something very alluring to
try...
5) Do you cross-collaborate with any other bands or musicians?
Although Belgium is one of the smallest countries of the world,
we are living widely apart. There's no real jamming together. I
never sought it too, for I compose almost every single note of
the scores for Hardcore. I need trained classical musicians
willing to venture into for them sometimes not so very tempting
areas. But they know already that I know very well what I want
and that they can learn quite a lot when playing in my bands.
Discipline, very hard work and fun are the key words in my work
with musicians. Most people might think that's an impossible
combination. I can assure you it isn't...
6) Do you listen to any related RIO/Chamber Rock band from
abroad (for example, Thinking Plague, Birdsongs of Mesozoic or
5uu's)?
Of Mezozoic I have records, but I don't listen too much to
music. I don't have time, for I have to write it, which
condemns me to silence in my working place!
7) Do you think that there is a worldwide renaissance of art
rock since the last ten years? If so, why do you think it is
happening? Which role is playing the Media and the mega-record
companies on this respect?
I don't count on any support. I record everything with my own
money. I try to get it on a label which might be e good house
for it. But I know there's not a real market for my output.
Your reaction and appreciation is really something which did us
well. But I fear you are among the great exceptions on this
globe. Hurrah to you all!
8) Classical-trained musicians that play progressive chamber
rock performing a Calypso! This is something to be heard
live... are you planning to release a live CD? What can you
tell us about your next release?
Yes, at the end of the month Monkey trial will be completely
finished.
I think there's something on it which is rather unique. This
time all the songs are intersected with soundscapes, which tell
the story of Buba, a monkey which already appeared in Book two
and Book four.
Now he's the main focus of the record. Although it's a kind of
metaphor for something very different. Buba tries to become
more human, and less apish. He wants to cross the border
between humans and simians. Of course he encounters mainly
rejection. And he gets proof of the impossibility of his self
chosen mission by another ape, called Horace (see the link with
"hors race", French for "out of his race") which in his career
as an ape in the presidential household encountered many apes
who almost were considered more human. "Ham" the first
astrochimp. "Washoe" the first ape who got taught American Sign
language and so on.
But like I already said it can all also be read as the efforts
of an unknown Belgian composer to impose to the world the
choice he made to make no difference between whatever sound
produced by whoever thought it necessary to do so.
And sitting on the barrier between this noman's lands, is
sometimes rather lonely, but who wants to be less so in
countries which one feels as not his own?
on www.agarthaprog.com
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01-Generation 363 [03:03]
02-The vaporous existence of Harry the Termite [04:09]
03-Eat your gravity! [06:08]
04-The buba-trap [05:18]
05-Between the treasure and the sun [03:40]
06-Murky third [03:12]
07-Bob's Bones [03:36]
08-Interlude1 - tickled by callipers [01:41]
09-Indian Prodioux [03:13]
10-Interlude2 - smuff [01:51]
11-Tom and Dick [03:29]
12-Interlude3 - slow burner [01:49]
13-The man of thessaly [03:13]
14-Interlude4 - the f-tune [01:58]
15-Castaway [07:02]
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53:22 min
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