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HUMAN GREED - World Fair

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Omnempathy OMCD05 Release Year: 2014 Note: fifth proper album by MICHAEL BEGGs project, complex & outcomposed pieces with many guest musicians such as CHRIS CONNELLY (MINISTRY), SOPHIE BANCROFT, COLIN POTTER, STEVEN R. SMITH and more...incorporating poetry & folk elements, thematically backed up by "the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, the singularity and heat death of the observable universe" Price (incl. 19% VAT): €14.00 More Info "Michael Begg: This is my 5th record as Human Greed, 7th if you include the non-ensemble pieces Dirt on Earth and the OMEGA soundtrack I released last year for Moscow’s blackSKYwhite theatre company. This one has been cooking for two years and has seen me attempt to up my game with regards to formal musical theory and composition. There is a lot going on in there and I don’t know how to begin marking out its foundations for you. Possibly best just to remain relatively quiet on the matter and hope it can speak for itself over a few listens. However, the songcraft has its roots partly in the 16th century – from where also arises the preoccupation with melancholy and mortality- and there is much to be owed to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, the singularity and heat death of the observable universe. That is all touched upon lightly, though I was keen to explore the potential for that science to be represented in a devotional mode more associated with faith. The ensemble this time is notable particularly for the number of voices that come into the recording. This, in itself, is unusual for someone like me so closely associated with ambient drifts and drones. So, aside from my long time partner, Deryk Thomas, Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry) gives a stylish reading of a traditional Scottish folk song, Scottish Jazz institution Sophie Bancroft joins the fold (I worked with her in the late 1990s running music and memory recovery workshops in dementia wards) and Sukie Smith from London’s Madam is also here. Nicole M. Boitos, sleeve artist for Swans, and James Blackstock, as well as my own Fortress Longing album shows that she, too, can hold a note. And I love her spoken word reading of the central World Far text on Waiting In A Car. Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound, Monos) being a long time collaborator both through Fovea Hex and Fragile Pitches is once again on hand to contribute to the treatments and I am so thrilled to have worked with Steven R. Smith (Ulaan Khol, Hala Strana) on a composition called Chrysler. Steven’s work always, to me, sounds like an advancing desert storm and my vision of such a storm tearing down a city really came to life here. The sound of his home made spike fiddle! Wow! Two gifted kids from the village helped out on the strings, and Pietro Riperbelli allowed me to plunder his archive of field recordings of cathedral interiors." [label info] www.omnempathy.com World Fair, album of the year : "There used to be a trinity of Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Coil. Now the sonic gate keepers are a quartet; Nurse, Current, Cyclobe and Human Greed.” Was Ist Das (UK) www.omnempathy.com "This is the fifth album by Human Greed (or Michael Begg's seventh if you count the other ones under his own name) and he worked for the last two years on this, and that's something that shows here. While Human Greed is mainly himself and Deryk Thomas, there is a whole bunch of musicians helping them out, on cello and violin but mainly in the vocal department, such as Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry), Sukie Smith and Sophie Bancroft. If I understand well the album is about exploring 'the potential for that science to be represented in a devotional mode more associated by faith', and Human Greed harks back to the 16th century, both for that and the song craft here. It's not that easy to detect I must say, but then: I am no expert on 16th century music either. In the past I compared the music of Human Greed with Fovea Hex, and it's still on a similar line. The mood is a bit dark, with string instruments playing minor chords, aided by dark and moody soundscapes, field recordings, spoken words, and sweet sung melodies, although Human Greed is less folky than the music of Fovea Hex. There are also links to the musical world of Current 93, especially when things are a spookier and more textured here, Colin Potter and Andrew Liles may be inspirations here, and the whole thing has no doubt something very English about it. The creepy country castle atmosphere, the mechanics of a broken doll perhaps. Human Greed moves between the soundscape textures and the more song based structures of some of these pieces, and with pieces fading into each other, this sounds like one long trip, a journey if you will, moving through this fine, yet somewhat dark landscape. In good Fovea Hex tradition there is also a bonus CDR available, in which Begg and Thomas take the whole music of the CD apart and make an entirely new studio construction out of that. You hear little bits of the original in here, sometimes you may recognize a cello, or a violin, some voices but it's otherwise heavy on the use of sound effects to create even denser atmospheres; the cloud on the CD is perhaps more grey; here's it's more black. More abstract perhaps too, and less with a story to tell us. This is an excellent form of sound recycling - to avoid the word 'remix'. An excellent release, all around." [FdW/Vital Weekly]