FTS003 – First Terrace Records

Featuring a different artist on each side.

On the ‘line’ side of FTS003 we hear the meeting of three veteran improvisors – Anna Homler (Breadwoman/Pharmacia Poetica), Adrian Northover (Remote Viewers) and Dave Tucker (The Fall). Born from the fertile creative friction of the London Improvisers Orchestra, they incantate together to deliver a clutch of winding, curious, mesmeric compositions.

On the ‘circle’ side we present a recording from Pierre Bastien – an artist of startling singularity and endless, joyful creativity. Recorded at Arts Santa Mònica in Barcelona with Catalonian group Cabo San Roque, Pierre takes the helm of their monumental mechanical sound sculpture – the Orquestra Mecànica de la França Xica – and guides the vast array of cogs and pistons through three movements. The orchestra was made up of thirty or forty machines, all linked to Pierre’s casio keyboard.

 

Crossing time, the voice and work of Anna Homler
Listen at http://soundin.org

Transportive and mesmerizing! 
Come along with Jim and Paul’s November 
Words On New Music 
audio podcast and listen
to the music of performance artist, singer,
sound maker and creator of Breadwoman,
Anna Homler!


Music featuring Anna Homler in this episode:

Plutonian Lullaby by Anna Homler & Sylvia Hallett
Ee Ché by Anna Homler & Steve Moshier
Yesh Té by Anna Homler & Steve Moshier
Tinselgruntz by Steve Beresford, Anna Homler and Richard Sanderson. From the Berlin Toy Bizaar at the Berlin Jazz Festival.
Probate Codes by the London Improvisatory Orchestra featuring Anna Homler and other voices, Adam Bohman and Sue Lynch.  Conducted by Steve Beresford.  Live voice processing Andrian Northover.  Recording by Jeff Ardone.

 

Photo Credit: Sue Einstein

BREADWOMAN
Variations and Improvisations

Anna Homler, voice  
Jorge Martin, electronic modules
with Maya Gingery as Breadwoman

Including music composed by the late Steve Moshier
from Breadwoman and Other Tales. (RVNG)

June 8, 2017  
7:30-8:30 PM
Free admission

Santa Monica Library
601 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 9040,
310.458.8600

 

More About Breadwoman

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In the early 80s, performance artist Anna Homler crossed paths with avant-garde composer Steve Moshier, and this collaboration was the result. Moshier took recordings of Homler’s wordless vocalizations and conceived other parts to accompany them, sometimes percussive, sometimes droning and ambient, always fitting with whatever she did. Some of the pieces, like “Ee Chê,”feature rhythmic chanting of invented syllables that sound as if they might be words in some unknown language; others, such as
the lengthy “Sirens,” consist of swoops, groans, crackles and other “non-musical” vocal noises. Moshier pairs themsympathetically, with “Ee Chê” presenting processed percussion with a relentless beat, and “Sirens” consisting of long synthesizer tones fading in and out. Each of the tracks has its own identity and sound. When it comes to abstract vocalizing (or whatever term you choose to cover Homler’s type of singing), there is a great danger of creating sounds that are very harsh and likely to repel many listeners (I’m thinking of performers like Diamanda Galás), and while Breadwoman is not for everyone, Homler never
comes off as abrasive. This music represents a middle point in performance art music – not as poppish as most of Laurie Anderson’s work (and certainly more abstract, given the lack of words), not as difficult as Galás. As such, it works admirably as its own thing, a creative vision of an alternative way of creating music outside the conventions of typical songcraft. And it’s also a rather enjoyable listen.

Download .pdf

Link to Review

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Breadwoman & Other Tales is a recently-released CD on the RVNG Intl label featuring the music of Anna Homler and Steve Moshier. Breadwoman is the persona adopted by vocalist Homler and the liner notes describe her as follows: “Breadwoman is a guide, a storyteller and an observer of human events. She communicates with gestures and songs in a language that is both mysterious and familiar. Breadwoman is so very old that she stands outside of time. Her territory is that of the interior, where there are no distinctions and all things are whole.”

Although the CD was released in February 2016, the music dates from the early 1980s Los Angeles new music scene. Anna Homler was deeply involved in performance art and recorded the vocalizing that ultimately became Breadwoman as she drove around town in her car. At the same time Steve Moshier was a percussionist with the Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra, often performing at the same experimental dance and theater venues where Homler appeared. Their collaboration was natural, with Anna supplying her cassette recordings to Moshier, who created the electronic accompaniment. The process was iterative – the vocals evolving as each version of the electronics was realized. This was a complex and time-consuming undertaking given the technology of the time – Moshier was working with a Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer, a Prophet analog synth, a Sequential Circuits sequencer along with 2-track and 4-track tapes.

The resulting tracks on Breadwoman & Other Tales are remarkable for their convincing insight and invocation of primal music. None of the vocal lines are heard in English but are rather spoken in some unknown ancient tongue, perhaps Eastern European in origin. The melody lines are clear and precisely sung by Ms. Homler, and the strange accents and words persuasively evoke life in a small village thousands of years ago. Moshier’s electronic accompaniment is completely contemporary and, by comparison, futuristic. This makes for an engaging balance – the timeworn words and melodies offset by analog electronic tones, adding to the mysterious and mystical feel in all these pieces.

Even without comprehensible words or context, the songs are recognizable for the human emotions they express. Anna Homler studied anthropology as an undergraduate at UCLA and the daily ebb and flow of primal society fills each of these pieces. Gu She’ Na’ Di, track 3, could be a folk melody about new love – full of optimism and hope – with a clarinet line that compliments the singing perfectly. Giyah on track 4, however, is solemn and deliberate, sung mostly in the lower registers, as if some sad event in village history is being recounted. Sirens, on track 6, is full of deep electronic tones and a menacing, predatory growl that invites fear and panic – reminding us that primal existence is precarious, full of uncertainty and danger.

Oo Nu Dah, track 2, has a mysterious pulsating in the electronics with a slightly alien feel as a faint voice comes to the top of the texture, chant-like, in a prayer of supplication. The melody becomes layered – perhaps a proto-canon – and it is as if we are witness to the origins of devotional worship. Celestial Ash, the final track, takes this to the collective level in a cloud of quiet whispers as a distant electronic humming sound emerges, building in volume – as if the sun is rising on the assembled. Voices are heard in short phrases and the electronics evoke a dignified alien presence. A melodic recap of the opening is sung – the language sounds vaguely Celtic – and we could be present at the annual gathering at Stonehenge 4000 years ago.

Breadwoman & Other Tales takes us back to a time when life was highly spiritual and lived in the moment. This CD reminds us that our brains are hardwired for the primal life, and we still respond to its ancient rhythms and sensibility.

Link to Review
http://www.sequenza21.com/cdreviews/2016/04/breadwoman-and-other-tales/

ALBUM REVIEW: ANNA HOMLER / STEVE MOSHIER – BREADWOMAN &
OTHER TALES by Will Pearson
Brooklyn label RVNG continues its program of idiosyncratic and avant-garde releases with this reissue of
Anna Homler and Steve Moshier’s 1985 foray into imagined myth, invented language and ambient
electronica. Even by RVNG’s standards, Breadwoman and Other Tales is weird. This music sounds not just
like it’s been unearthed from another time, but from outside of time altogether.

Homler (a performance artist) met Moshier (an avant-garde musician) in L.A.’s underground gallery culture in the early ’80s. She had already developed the character of Breadwoman, “a woman so old she’s turned to bread,” and a form of extra-linguistic incantation and chant that she’d been recording onto cassette. She gave the cassettes to Moshier, who composed ambient soundscapes to accompany them using 2-track and 4-track tape recorders, synths, effects and a sequencer.

The result is a record that feels meaningful despite its nonsensical language, which doesn’t sound dated in the least, neither sonically nor stylistically. “Oo Nu Dah” is an early highlight, and finds Moshier looping and multi-tracking Homler’s voice into Reich-like echoes that produce unnerving harmonies. “Sirens” is a terrifying excursion into the primordial, with Homler delivering inhuman squeaks, squeals and groans that evoke both birth and death.

If you’re looking for a record to give your bohemian wine tasting an air of inscrutable sophistication, this record will do the trick, but it’s better than that; it demands and deserves a quiet concentration in order for its transcendental ambitions to flourish. (RVNG Intl.)
Rating: 8/10

Link to Article

Download .pdf

ALBUM REVIEW: ANNA HOMLER / STEVE MOSHIER –
BREADWOMAN & OTHER TALES

Spellbinding transmission from the esoteric melting pot of early ’80s L.A.; an expanded reissue of the eponymous debut release by Anna Homler & Steve Moshier’s sound art duo, Breadwoman, including two
bonus, previously unreleased pieces.

First kneaded in 1982 by performance artist Anna Homler, Breadwoman arose as a “being who exists outside of time”, intersecting various strands of L.A.’s art scene – gallery culture, DIY avant-garde, meaning-making mysticism – with a combination of gauzy electronics, glossolalic vocalese, and a costume made out of bread.

You can certainly colour us beguiled at Breadwoman & Other Tales, presenting the original tape’s alien song cycle – from the primordial shuffle and curiously Japanese-sounding vocalese of Ee Chê, thru the floating prisms of Oo Nu Dah, to the Rashad Becker-esque electronics of Giyah and kosmiche crème of Yesh’ Te – whilst the two bonus tracks angle far, far-out into stunning cinematic abstraction sounding like Helge Sten scoring a Lynch flick with the 12 minute Sirens, whereas Celestial Ash scries a precedent to everything from Enya and Julia Holter to Anna Caragnano & Donato Dozzy’s Sintetizzatrice.

Can easily predict this becoming an end-of-year favourite. Recommended!

Link to article

Download .pdf

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ALBUM REVIEW: ANNA HOMLER / STEVE MOSHIER –
BREADWOMAN & OTHER TALES
In the early 80s, performance artist Anna Homler crossed paths with avant-garde composer Steve Moshier,
and this collaboration was the result.

Moshier took recordings of Homler’s wordless vocalizations and conceived other parts to accompany them, sometimes percussive, sometimes droning and ambient, always fitting with whatever she did. Some of the pieces, like “Ee Chê,” feature rhythmic chanting of invented syllables that sound as if they might be words in some unknown language; others, such as the lengthy “Sirens,” consist of swoops, groans, crackles and other “non-musical” vocal noises. Moshier pairs them sympathetically, with “Ee Chê” presenting processed percussion with a relentless beat, and “Sirens” consisting of long synthesizer tones fading in and out.

Each of the tracks has its own identity and sound. When it comes to abstract vocalizing (or whatever term you choose to cover Homler’s type of singing), there is a great danger of creating sounds that are very harsh and likely to repel many listeners, and while Breadwoman is not for everyone, Homler never comes off as abrasive.

This music represents a middle point in performance art music – not as poppish as most of Laurie Anderson’s work (and certainly more abstract, given the lack of words), not as difficult as Galás. As such, it works admirably as its own thing, a creative vision of an alternative way of creating music outside the conventions of typical songcraft. And it’s also a rather enjoyable listen.

Download .pdf

Link to article online

ANNA HOMLER (voice, toys & devices) Michael Delia (sound sculptures & homemade instruments) joined by guests Al Margolis (live electronics) and Katherine Liberovskya (live video) for an evening of idiosyncratic improvisation.

March 11, 2015. 9pm
224 Centre Street at Grand, Third Floor, NY 10013
212 431 5127, 431 6430

For more information, visit:
www.experimentalintermedia.org
www.XIrecords.org
mad.node9.org

NOVEMBER 2014

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Alternativa Festival

Pharmacia Poetica Installation
http://www.alternativa-festival.cz/detail-en/anna-homler-pharmacia-poetica

 

ah_installationslideshow_liplecture

 

Vocal Workshop
http://www.alternativa-festival.cz/detail-en/workshop-anny-homler

http://skolska28.cz/en/vocal-workshop

 

 

 

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Skolska 28 Performance

Anna Homler &
George Cremaschi duo

http://skolska28.cz/en/anna-homler-george-cremaschi-duo

 

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Performance

Four eclectic improvisers crossed meridians to meet in the heart of  Europe: ‪Jaroslav Kořán‬, Fabio Turchetti, Anna Homler, and Michael Delia

http://www.alternativa-festival.cz/detail-en/dreamers-crossing

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KFJC 89.7 FM, The Attic
Hosted by Naysayer

Live Performance & Interview
with possible special guests, Alison Blunt and Gianni Mimmo.

Thursday, May 29, 2014
10:00 pm – 2:00 am

More information at
http://www.kfjc.org

copy-cropped-testcardwallgermany1From Radio-On Berlin, listen to Don Campau’s No Pigeonholes and his special feature on Anna Homler.

Don’s words:
“Anna is one of my favorites. Strangely, I originally found about her from Harald Ziegler in Koln and then found the CD at Gelbe Muisik in Berlin 1996. Later, she and I became friends…a wonderful person and we will finally meet in a few days in Berkeley.”

Click here to listen ->
http://www.mixcloud.com/doncampau/no-pigeonholes-radio-on-edition-anna-homler-special/