Anna Homler & Steve Moshier

Breadwoman & Other Tales (1985, Reissue February 5, 2016)

 ^{Anna Homler & Steve Moshier — Breadwoman & Other Tales (1985)}
••   Žena oblečená do rolnických šatů, s chlebem jako maskou na tváři. Projížděla Topanga Canyonem v roce 1961 svým vozem Cadillac (který nazvala Velrybou), když píseň přišla k ní, jemně se jí dotkla..., ale nebyla to píseň v jakémkoli jazyce, který znala. Začala si ji zpívat jako ‘jakýsi věrný přijímač’ a tyto přenosy se nakonec staly podkladovým materiálem pro album ‘Breadwoman a jiné příběhy’ ve stylu připomínajícím částečně Meredith Monk a Joan La Barbaru. Postupně byly písně vybaveny velkou sílou: mají pravomoc přijímat posluchače daleko za hranicemi známého hudebního vesmíru.
••   Fyzické album je dodáváno s 20–ti stránkovým bookletem s podrobnými poznámkami, fotografiemi a tzv. ephemera. To vše, když budete držet ve svých rukou, bude zajisté příjemnou zkušeností, jak hodiny běží s touto hudbou jako vaším zvukovým doprovodem, tedy, něčím jako eskortní službou..Location: Los Angeles, California
Album release: February 5, 2016
Record Label: RVNG Intl.
Duration:     41:02
Tracks:
LP
Side A (33 RPM)
A1. Ee Chê      8:03
A2. Oo Nu Dah      6:01
A3. Gu She’ Na’ Di      5:34
A4. Giyah      5:00
Side B (33 RPM)
B1. Yesh’ Te      4:12
B2. Sirens      12:06
B3. Celestial Ash (Edit)      7:06
CD / DIGITAL
01. Ee Chê     8:03
02. Oo Nu Dah     6:01
03. Gu She’ Na’ Di     5:34
04. Giyah     5:00
05. Yesh’ Te     4:12
06. Sirens     12:06
07. Celestial Ash     7:06
Editorial Reviews:
♠   Breadwoman & Other Tales are the collected recordings of a language arising. It is the sound and document of Anna Homler divining speech, lyrical fragments, and melody for music composed, mixed, and engineered by Steve Moshier.
♠   It’s 1982 and Anna is driving an ocean blue classic Cadillac to meet renowned poet and playwright Deena Metzger in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Passing a non–descript desert patch where tall wheat and mustard flowers grow, Anna opens her mouth and sings in a salient stream of rhythmic, melodic sound.
♠   Breadwoman is born, but not by immaculate conception. For Homler, performance art had recently become “a form big enough to contain everything happening” during her studies with Rachel Rosenthal at Otis College of Art and Design. As this performative freedom fed into the enchanted vocalese, the character of Breadwoman emerged.
♠   Homler tread the same multi–disciplinary waters where Steve Moshier and the Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra (CRMO), a communal avant–garde urban chamber music ensemble formed in LA in 1979, floated. When their currents connected, it was clear Homler and Moshier were kin, crossing genres through intensely physical de–significations of music: quasi–theatrical, fully mythic, ritualistic performances.
♠   Instead of confining Anna as “a vocalist,” Moshier recognized Anna’s voice as a sonic element. To accomplish the recordings of this collection, Moshier chose the least song–like material from Homler’s handheld cassette transcriptions and composed music considerately. Anna would then record chants and song variations which Steve would tweak for final touches through his arsenal of analog equipment.
♠   Although Breadwoman stands outside of time, she is is rich in the ingredients of 1980s Los Angeles performance art, renegade DIY punk, gallery culture, galvanized jazz, underground cassette–trading culture, drag extravaganzas, and esoteric meaning–making mysticism.
♠   Breadwoman is a storyteller — she’s so very old she’s turned into bread. Breadwoman says: If you don’t try to understand, you will. She is the voice, and the voice is cosmic reality’s musicality. Through Breadwoman & Other Tales, we hear material meet mythos.
♠   Anna Homler and Steve Moshier’s Breadwoman & Other Tales is available now on LP, CD, and digital formats. Extensive liner notes and artist interviews were overseen by Andrew Choate. The collection was assembled by RVNG, Anna Homler, and Steve Moshier, who both continue making music to this day.Review
By Will Pearson, Published Feb 03, 2016 / Score: 8
♠   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. ♠   http://exclaim.ca/
Label: http://igetrvng.com/
Also:
By Philip Sherburne; February 18, 2016;  Score: 8.1
♠   http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21414-breadwoman-other-tales/
Jedd Beaudoin, 15 February 2016;  Score: 8
♠   http://www.popmatters.com/review/anna-homler-and-steve-moshier-breadwoman-other-tales/ABOUT:
••   ANNA HOMLER, is a vocal, visual and performance artist based in Los Angeles. She has performed and exhibited her workin venues around the world. With a sensibility that is both ancient and post-modern, Homler sings in an improvised melodic language. Her work explores alternative means of communication and the poetics of ordinary things. She creates perceptual interventions by using language as music and objects as instruments.
••   HOMLER’s music first became known in the 1980s with her Breadwoman cassette (High Performance Audio), a collaboration with Steve Moshier. Her debut album, Dó Ya Sá di Dó (amf), was released in 1992. In 1994 she was featured on Sugarconnection: Alien cake (No Man’s Land) and in 1995 on Macaronic Sines (Lowlands), a collaboration with Geert Waegeman and Pavel Fajt. In the mid–1990s, she released two albums with the Voices of Kwahn in the United Kingdom: Silver Bowl Transmission (North/South) and Peninsular Enclosure (Swarf Finger). In 1997 a recording of her live performance with Waegeman and Fajt was released as Corne de Vache (Victo). House of Hands (ND) was released in 2000, and in 2005, Kelpland Serenades (pfMENTUM) with Steuart Liebig, and Piewacket (PNT) with Stephanie Payne. Her duo–project with Sylvia Hallett, The Many Moods of Bread and Shed (Orchestra Pit Recording Co.) was released in 2012. On her most recent album, released in 2014, Here & Here & Here (pfMENTUM) she performs as part of the Michael Vlatkovich quintet. Website: http://annahomler.com/
The complete discography: http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/music/homler/
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Anna Homler & Steve Moshier

Breadwoman & Other Tales (1985, Reissue February 5, 2016)

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