FEATURED CD: Pierrot Lunaire - Gudrun

[Poisoned Youth]

Review from ProgArchives (Finnforest)

OK. Now THIS..is delicious.

This is an album I could not have enjoyed just a few years ago as I didn't have the patience for something this weird/challenging. Many people listen to music and consciously look for riffs or vocals to grab onto so they can relate, so they can just enjoy and rock out. You can't do that here. You have to surrender your expectations about what music is and let Pierrot Lunaire paint the picture for you. This is one of the wildest albums you'll ever hear so if you like your music easily digestible, Gudrun is not for you. This album is for the adventurous listener. But so rewarding and the most unique spin I've had in ages.

Pierrot Lunaire is an Italian band from the 70s but this is not your typical "Italian classic" cd. Gudrun is more like avant-garde, free thought, stream of consciousness, melodic madness. It is completely bizarre music with some similarities to Opus Avantra but not comparable to anything really. Conventions go out the window as we are treated to all manner of instruments and free-form vocals in these mini trips. It is held together by the dodging presence of tasteful melodies which are not obvious but they are there. Plenty of them. This is experimentation at its finest but unlike some trippy albums which are just dissonant to an annoying level, Gudrun is enjoyable and beautiful. The album is split into tracks but plays out like one long dream sequence separated by the click of a camera, an effect that makes us feel like we're viewing photos of a person's trip.

"Gudrun," the long title track, starts out promising, dreamlike, mysterious. But I agree with another reviewer that the 11 minute opener runs out of steam and therefore I can't go 5 stars here. The first half is great but the latter part goes on unnecessarily long. But we're that close to a masterpiece so if you have a deep enough collection to have an "avant" shelf, then this is an essential release for that shelf. "Dietro il Silenzio" is a gorgeous piano solo that is all too short, just a brief wistful moment needed to recover from the first song. "Plaisir d'amour" is street sounds and vocal loops that border on insanity until some very obnoxious synths kick in. "Giovane Madre" actually sounds a bit like a song with normalcy contributed by some really outstanding percussion work, but the normalcy won't last. Another refuge from the strangeness and an absolute knockout track is "Morella" which is pure Italian prog beauty, lush melody, great vocals, piano, acoustic, bass, drums and perfect arrangement. It's a perfect song that ends in an outbreak of laughter signaling that reality has begun to slip away again. But I can't get enough of it! I wish this were a double album.

A must for fans of Italian prog, avant-garde, and for daring listeners of all stripes. A must for lovers of truly progressive music! 4.5 stars.

[Udi Koomran]

Classic stuff !

[Scrotum Scissor]

Absolutely one of the most idiosyncratic releases ever by an Italian band - "prog" or otherwise. I really like their more baroquy-folky first release as well, but Gudrun stands out altogether.

It has elements of staged sound-performance that I don't think I have heard done in the same fashion elsewhere, with those puzzling interludes rendering the whole thing an almost cinematic character of unity. And there's a prominent surrealist twist to the compositional aspect; there's that piece for piano only for instance (track 2, I believe), contrasting with large scale electric arrangements plus sprechgesang wrapped in electronic mayhem. My fave songs are probably the last two ("Morella" and "Mein Armer Italiener", both posted here), where passionate drama and grandeur runs over into a highly self-conscious sort of artistic farce. And there's little doubt as to the profoundly post-modern aspiration of the whole thing.

The final song is one of my fave endings from any album; like a headmovie in five and a half minutes, merging internal satire, pure rock power (albeit tongue-in-cheek), "fourth wall"-enactment, mock quasi-opera and an almost indiscernable disposal of instrumentation (making synths sound like a human whistle?). And there's bizarre yet gorgeous melody in abundance, even untouched by the alleged distance that arises between listener and performer due to the aesthetic concept of it all.

Totally beautiful! I must say Pierrot Lunaire succeeded far better at this sort of pretention than Opus Avantra or many other European acts I can think of at the spur of the moment. And one of the finest record sleeves from the late 70s - IMHO.

[Trane]

One of the best 1-2 shot from Italy (QVL being the other)

[Reach]

One of the best 1-2 shot from Italy (QVL being the other)

[mellotron storm]

I guess i don't appreciate this lke most do. The shrilling female vocals make this a tough one for me to enjoy. Adventerous stuff though that is sort of an avant / folk style.

[no.nine]

Oh yeah, this is one of my favorites! It was one of probably my first 10 Italian Prog albums, and even though it's not representative of Italian Prog at all really, it certainly helped whet my appetite for even more. I want to emphasize one line from the review quoted above:

"This is experimentation at its finest but unlike some trippy albums which are just dissonant to an annoying level, Gudrun is enjoyable and beautiful".

I was going to say essentially the same thing, because this one point sums up what makes this album work so well IMO. As unusual as Gudrun is, and despite the many types of musical ground which it covers, it never gets weird for the sake of getting weird (like Opus Avantra, for example). There's always some type of musical grounding in even the strangest passages. And I think that's one of the reasons it remains so compelling.

[TheH]

A must have if you are into Avant stuff.

[Progbear]

—And who is “Gudrun”?
—In a Norse myth, Gudrun was a sinner who murdered her husband.
—And will you live up to that?
—Which would you prefer me to live up to, Mr Crich? The sinner or the murderer?

Haven’t heard the album, but it allowed me to quote one of my favourite movies.

-------------
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"Is mayonnaise an instrument?" --Patrick Star

N.P.:“Push Push Pull Pull”-Judie Tzuke/Ritmo

[Sunhillow]

I need to buy myself an original copy now. This is a classic.

[Modry Effekt]

I can only echo Scrotum Scissor's words and No.nine as well.
Outstanding album.

[JeffCarney]

I recently became a convert on this one. Liked it before but rated the first album much higher.

But a recent spin made me realize just how utterly brilliant this album is and it is simply a very different album to the debut.

Stalteri also did a very Terry Riley-like solo album a few years after this.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

I guess i don't appreciate this lke most do. The shrilling female vocals make this a tough one for me to enjoy. Adventerous stuff though that is sort of an avant / folk style.

I cant fall into line with this thing either. It's not so much the female vocals... and I must say that from track 5 on it's a decent collection of Avant bits and pieces... but the album overall lacks the cohesiveness of truly great Avant Prog albums. In fact, if one is a fan of *music* and expects to hear *music* when one puts a music CD into their player, the first 4 tracks (20 minutes) will exhaust one's patience, save for some brief quotes of Elvis Presley - Fools Rush In on track 3

CAVEAT EMPTOR: I acquired this album based on a handful of rave reviews on PE years ago. I wrote this while listening to the album again. There is *way* more quality Avant music than this particular album.

[spacefreak]

One of the three best italian progressive releases of all times for me. Very innovative, from Terry Riley inspired minimalism to italian prog eclecticism, theatrical RIO -even reaching out the realms of musique concrete. A masterpiece to my ears.

[Udi Koomran]

Copy past from Mutant Sounds
Biography
Along with the likes of Franco Battiato, Opus Avantra and Piccho dal Pozzo, Pierrot Lunaire were one of the artists that contributed to the small, but artistically significant, avant progressive scene of Italy in the mid-70s. Taking their name from an Arnold Schoenberg opera, the band certainly shared the composer's affinity for new and innovative approaches to music. Still, over the course of their two albums, Pierrot Lunaire draw from a broad set of influences as diverse as Faust, PFM and Debussy for their eclectic, unpredictable sound.
The band is centered around the compositional talents of classically trained pianist Arturo Stalteri. Pierrot Lunaire seems to be his first major project upon his graduation from the Conservatory of L'Aquila, and in retrospect his mid-70s venture into progressive rock seems to be only the first step in a career fascination with post-modernism and 20th century musical ideas. After 1976's experimental progressive rock masterpiece, Gudrun, he embarked on a solo career which extends to the present day. Of interest to the progressive rock listener is his first solo work, the excellent Andre Sulla Luna, which is somewhat a continuation of the Pierrot Lunaire sound, as well as perhaps the reworkings he has done over the years of work by artists such as Phillip Glass and Brian Eno. In any case, Pierrot Lunaire's two albums still stand as ingenious testaments to what the spirit of progressive rock could really have been about, and are a must for adventurous listeners. - Greg Northrup [January 2002]
Gudrun (1976)
Damn. Well, where the hell do I begin? It's hard enough to even describe the album, much less illustrate what I find so intriguing and downright resonant about it. Sure, those of you familiar with other so-called "avant-Italian" artists like Franco Battiato and Picchio dal Pozzo will have a good head start, but comparisons ultimately fall way short. To put it simply, this is one of coolest, most original, exciting and eclectic albums I've ever heard. Mixing everything from symphonic progressive, avant-garde, jazz, minimalism, baroque classical, embryonic electronica and even opera into a fully cohesive, impeccably structured work might seem like a daunting task, but Arturo Stalteri and Pierrot Lunaire have done it with apparent ease. They've made something work which is nearly impossible to describe in words, and that means something.
The band jumps from style to style with an impossible grace, segueing, contrasting and even colliding segments, themes and genres. The effect is like that of a dream, a journey through some vast sound collage with endless depth and ingenuity around every corner. The only way to take this is step by step. Indulge me. The album opens with alien flute and harpsichord melodies of the title track. Already there is a surreality about the goings-on. A child's voice talks in Italian over campy synthesizer melodies. Boisterous female operatic vocals suddenly emerge along with melodic piano runs and distorted guitar stabs. Further and further the listener is dragged, strange sounds burst out from nothingness, the vocals continue meaninglessly, "...waves crashing on the seashore...", "...a stranger cries...", "...wandering, rushing into the earth...". In fact, the entire album is almost like some free association exercise put to music. At some point, who knows where, the delicate solo piano, almost jazzy, but not quite, of "Dietro dil Silenzio" becomes comes to the fore. Then it's cars, buses, and street sounds leading up to what is among the album's most purely beautiful moments in "Plaisir d'amour", a flailing, distorted, flanged-out electronic motif provides a melodic basis for a crystalline female vocal line that sounds almost familiar, but impossible to place. Eerily beautiful. Before long, one is subsumed by the active, offbeat synthesizer melodies of "Sonde di Profondità", a tape clicks, then a radio playing some kind of Italian pop music is interrupted by an emergency broadcast. "Attenzione! Attenzione!"... one is at once alarmed, then the next moment soothed, as the official's voice fades beyond a soundscape of surreal synthesizers and guitars. "Morella" may be the most cathartic and haunting moment on the album; a sublime, descending piano melody backs a heart wrenching operatic vocal. "Mein in Armen Italiener" closes things out, another varied piece that moves from progressive rock bombast to folk music in a series of false endings before finally concluding.
Anyway, pardon the rave, but Gudrun has become one of my all time favorite albums in recent months, and easily within my top five or so Italian albums. However, typical Italian prog this is not, but maybe that's what's so damn invigorating about this album. It is totally unique, unequivocally inventive and endlessly startling in its sheer capacity for pleasant surprises. A work that effortlessly blows the doors off boundaries and genre, Gudrun is one of those masterpieces where only one classification seems appropriate: extraordinary music. - Greg Northrup [January 2002]

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Copy past from Mutant Sounds
Franco Battiato and Picchio dal Pozzo[January 2002]

I like the core albums of those artists *way* better than Gudrun. Gudrun just sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown in a blender. It doesn't work as a whole. That's not to say that bits and pieces of it aren't good because there are good bits in there to be sure.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Gudrun just sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown in a blender. It doesn't work as a whole.

One of the exact things that compell me with this release is the fact that it does not fall into the broader "avant-prog" (be it Kraut or RIO or whatever, both being idioms I love) or "prog-folk" spectrum in any imaginable manner, it's just in a sense wholly introspective yet firmly direct - or even blunt - in its delivery of ideas and concepts. What may come across as an arbitrary "blender"-effect to you, strikes me as fascinatingly successful partly because of the way this "blendering" is carried out.

Numerous cultural theorists, from Nietzsche to Martin Buber to Jung to Walter Benjamin to Hermann Broch to Sartre, have pointed to the overall impact of the surreal's impression on man's state of mind; that the anxiety emannating from experiencing the surreal relates not to the instinctive fear of danger, but to the existential menace which occurs when consciousness liberates itself from the rationale of "expected meaning" - or chaos angst, as Bataille called it. Starlit night skies of utterly meaningless eternity, the wild and wonderful madness of intoxication, of raw sex, of taste, release and ultimately of death. All the things we live for, but whose "grasp" we may trick ourselves into thinking that we should attempt to overcome.

[Zeuhlmate]

I got it yesterday, listen to it twice. an excellent gem! Reminds me somewhat of ZNR - Barricade 3, Aksak Maboul - Onze dances ... and parts from Catherine Jeauniaux - fluvial, but its something else, unique. It has to be heard in its entirity, doesnt work very well on youtube listening to single tunes.

[Scrotum Scissor]

It has to be heard in its entirity, doesnt work very well on youtube listening to single tunes.

Very true, I think. That's where the "cinematic" element comes into play - also as actually in a play.