-──────────────── ▄██▄ ──────── ▀█████▄ -── ███ ███ ─ ▄██▄ ▀█████▄ ──── ▐███ ███▌ ▀██▀ ▄██████▄ -─ ████ ████ ▄▄▄ ▄██████████▄ ▐█████████▌ ███▌▐████▀ ▀████▀ ███████████ ████ ██▀ ─── ▀▀ ▐█████ █████▌▐███ ▀ ██████ ██████ ▀██ ────────── ███████ ███████▄ █ -.2ooo.- ─────── ▄▄▄ ──────────────── "HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS" _______________________________________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________________________________ 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] ------- 53:22 min _______________________________________________________________________