Ghedalia Tazartes – ‘Coda Lunga, Rushes Of India’ [Von Records]

We’ve been fan boy obsessed with the output of Ghedalia Tazartes since Paul Ackroyd introduced him into the NTS show a year or so back. The further you dig the more rewarding the experience of Tazartes is, as the sound-artist / loop master’s work sounds like no one else and he rarely repeats himself.

As the story goes, in 1974 Ghedalia bought a microphone, a tape recorder and a band echo, and set about creating his own musical language using his voice as the primary instrument. Dubbed a musical nomad, the French sound-artist has been releasing mostly full lengths and almost exclusively wax since 1979, racking up plates on over fifteen different labels and not a boring one among them. The compositions range from 20 minute field recording journeys to 45 second acapellas, always raw and always captivating to listen to.

Basically Tazartès creates a bed of loops and/or drones using taped samples and synthesizers and then sings over them in a style that sounds like gypsy folk music. But it is interrupted by sudden cuts to a child speaking (reciting?), sometimes piano or string instruments stating a new theme, or found sounds, only to cut from that back into a different loop and another song…

…Ghédalia Tazartès is a nomad. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. He paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. Don’t become a black, an arab, a Tibetan monk, a jew, a woman or an animal but to feel all this stirring deep inside of you.” Basically Tazartès creates a bed of loops and/or drones using taped samples and synthesizers and then sings over them in a style that sounds like gypsy folk music. But it is interrupted by sudden cuts to a child speaking (reciting?), sometimes piano or string instruments stating a new theme, or found sounds, only to cut from that back into a different loop and another song.

As well as the solo workings, Tazartes has scored live performances (for theater and dance) as well as soundtracks, and since 2009 toured with the super group that is him, David Fenech and Jac Berrocal, whose Superdisque album on Sub Rosa is an essential listen. But all that’s for another time, as it’s the freedom and experimentalism of his unrestrained solo work that we’re talking about now.

Not entirely sure what’s being said in the below video (or at all as don’t speak French) but it seems to be about the Haxan film he provided the soundtrack for.

The new album – titled either Coda Lunga or Rushes Of India depending on the source you believe – is one of the most out there releases we’ve heard this year; no rules, no references and as the label poetically put it “folklore of a non-existent country”. For once Ghedalia Tazartes puts his voice in the mix as the secondary driver of the sounds, letting the music rule, and labeling this as his one and only instrumental album.

Von Records are the label behind this particular plate and have included a DVD with it, comprising of material shot by Ghedalia on his journey to India / Kerala. At the time he was researching a forthcoming composition piece for a dance company, with some of the field recordings and material collected during this journey working as the starting point for Coda Lunga. Not normally a big fan of these edited DVDs but in this context it’s properly enjoyable and enhances what’s going on.

Just for a bonus treat here’s some shaky footage of Ghedalia Tazartes playing live in Berlin back in 2009.