Music for Wilder Mann, the new album by Teho Teardo.
Released on Specula on January 21st, 2013 on CD, LP (gatefold cover and inner sleeve) and download.
Written, recorded and mixed by Teho Teardo at the Basement Recordings in Roma.
It's been a while since his last album, after many successful soundtrack works it's time for a new record, not connected to the movie world but still close to the visual media.
On this new project Teho establish an unusual relation with the incredible photographic book by Charles Fréger: Wilder Mann, The Image Of The Savage.
This album carries a profoundly moving feeling mixing strings, guitars and electronics, poignancy is the most evident feeling here. This music erases the space between our safe technological lifestyle and the monsters that live in territories as far as the eye can see. Savages inherited from a pagan tradition that quickly find their way into our own feelings.
Fantastic musicians like The Balanescu Quartet, Erik Friedlander (Masada/John Zorn), Julia Kent (Antony and the Johnsons, Rasputina), Martina Bertoni played the strings on this album. Their contribution helped building melodic cells out of layers of atmospheric drones.
Teho's unique style, difficult to categorize, brings us a really dark sound whose complexity discloses several minuscule elements that keep changing within a repetitive structure, like if repetition were the only possible way for a change.
Inspired from Wilder Mann: The Image Of The Savage, the great photographic book by Charles Fréger. The transformation of man to beast is a central aspect of traditional pagan rituals that are centuries old and which celebrate the seasonal cycle, fertility, life and death. Each year, throughout Europe, from Scotland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Italy, from Portugal to Greece via France, Switzerland and Germany, people literally put themselves into the skin of the 'savage', in masquerades that stretch back centuries. By becoming a bear, a goat, a stag or a wild boar, a man of straw, a devil or a monster with jaws of steel, these people celebrate the cycle of life and of the seasons. Their costumes, made of animal skins or of plants, and decorated with bones, encircled with bells, and capped with horns or antlers, amaze us with their extraordinary diversity and prodigious beauty. Work on this project took photographer Charles Freger to eighteen European countries in search of the mythological figure of the Wild Man: Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Croatia, Finland, Romania and the UK.
Please note: if you buy the vinyl here you'll receive a free download of hi quality mp3s.
Attenzione: se acquistate qui il vinile riceverete un link per scaricare gratuitamente l'album in versione mp3 ad alta qualità.
Teho Teardo - guitars, bass, autoharp, piano, rhodes, dulcimer, harmonium, bells, organ, vibraphone, programming, electronics
The Balanescu Quartet:
Alexander Balanescu - violin
James Shenton - violin
Katie Wilkinson - viola
Nick Holland - cello
and
Martina Bertoni - cello
Erik Friedlander - cello
Julia Kent - cello
Music inspired from Wilder Mann, a book by the amazing french photographer Charles Fréger
"I was going on an excursion within tribal Europe, the polar opposite of our images of modern civilisations. I was entering into a territory of landscapes as far as the eye can see. Wilder Mann was its archetypal hero, half man half beast, a hairy monster, a multi-faceted devil, a bloodthirsty or soft teddy bear, a fertile caprine or a scapegoat wild boar.
I had envisioned an organic wild man, hidden behind mud, grease, charcoal, the sculpted wood of his horned mask, covered in leaves or dead animals, wearing his bells noisily. I had already fantasised that he was like an animal belonging to a pack of crouching bipeds: the essential model of a zoomorphic figure, whose rudimentary appearance and ritualistic attire would classify him as belonging to a form of universal nudity".
Charles Fréger
Tracklist
1. attonita
2 wilder mann
3 wake up the bear
4 dead tree hugger
5 the rapture institute
6 transfiguration of a bear
7 a guide for small joys
8 ultra you
