Vril
VRIL
with CHRIS CUTLER - LUKAS SIMONIS - ALAN JENKINS - BOB DRAKE
BART MARIS & EDWARD PERRAUD
EN / As a drummer, Chris Cutler made history with bands like ART BEARS (Fred Frith - Dagmar Krause), HENRY COW, CASSIBER (with Heiner Goebbels), PERE UBU, GONG and The RESIDENTS. In his little shop in downtown London, he ran the Reccommended Records Label, which presents 'the crème de la crème' of Avant Rock. (RIO / RIO). VRIL originally is a studio project concepted by Lukas Simonis, the "Snakefinger" of The Netherlands. As such, VRIL is something of a supergroup; purveyors of experimental music, whose combined experience spans over a century. They play very little live shows despite having released 2 critically acclaimed records. Live, they’ll play without a PA, raw, intense and refreshing.
NL / Hier kennen we BART MARIS van Flat Earth Society, Kamikaze, Moker... Minder bekend zijn de internationale formaties; 69, Electric Barbarian, 1.000, Victor Toth en nu Synaestetic Trip. Parijse duizendpoot EDWARD PERRAUD speelt drums bij "Das Kapital", een trio dat op dit moment furore maakt op de grote Europese jazzpodia
BACKGROUND INFO / Vril was originally a studio project, instigated by Drake, Simonis & Cutler. After making their first album they asked english surrealist writer Frank Key to come up with the meaning for all that. And Frank did. He invented a story ( see the sleevenotes) & the names of the songs. Then VRIL made another album, two years later. And Frank did it again. Both albums were recorded & mixed at Bob's studio in the south of France. For the second album they were helped by the swiss musician Pierre Omer (ao. The Dead Brothers) on guitar. So now there were two albums but until now no public performances whatsoever.
Then -after reading the sleevenotes about the Ulm award- Lukas thought it might be a good idea to really ask people to make films to the music (NOT in a videoclip kinda way and NOT the other way round). So now we've asked 15 filmmakers to come up with a film that belongs to a vril song, the idea being that there will be a VRIL DVD with films & music. (filmmakers we asked; Pieter Jan Smit, Nino Purtskhvanidze, Florian Kramer, Daniel Zimmer, Sander Blom, Stella van Voorst van Beest, Esther Urlus, Marit Shalem, Lenno Verhoog, Christine Bruckmeier, Chuck o'Meara, Annette Carle, Joost van Veen, Sandra Salter)
And this might come as a shock to some of you but somebody uttered the idea that playing live would not be such a bad idea after allŠ Pierre said he couldn't do that as he was allready travelling a lot between Geneva and Madrid so we asked twangy englishman Alan Jenkins (Cordelia Records, Chrystanthemums, Deep Freeze Mice) to replace him. And he said he would. The idea is that we will start in the NetherlandsŠ And maybe Present the DVD there as well. And not use a PA, just play the stuff on our backline. (if that is possible for the places we'll play). And then we'll see what happensŠ maybe use the films as a background to the songs?
FIRST ALBUM 'Effigies In Cork'; Drake goaded guitarist and sometimes collaborator Lukas Simonis to come up with catchy fragments and unfinished bits for the 21st C. equivalent of the surf record. Simonis' guitars sometimes wiggle with a nervous twangy tremolo, but they're often just drop-dead gorgeous as they flesh out little compact rock puzzles with odd cadences and unexplored melodic quirks. At moments it could be the post-Zeppelin guitar album that Jimmy Page has never managed to make, for all it's texture. ' Effigies in Cork ' with it's brief song-like pieces, seems simple on the surface, but it's an illusion -it's got depth equal to 'Spoors', plus a charming quality that makes it the more immediately hosptable.
SECOND ALBUM 'The Fatal Duckpond' Award-winning soundtrack to the film by Horst Gack, (Prix Ultra de Concourse Lumiere, Ulm, 2009: Best Soundtrack). After a break of six years, Chris Cutler, Bob Drake and Lukas Simonis, now with added ingredient Pierre Omer, present the second volume of recordings by the elusive VRIL - a band who revive and update both the great institution of the guitar instrumental and the now sadly neglected practice of collective arrangement, intense rehearsal and live studio performance. Appropriate to the half century that has passed since the birth of the form, these hits dodge about, get bored easily and blend both concentration and complexity with the still indispensable traditional qualities that made the genre great: hummability, crafted sounds, nifty arrangements, ridiculous gimmicks and ensemble playing. 'Neither tribute nor parody, these enigmatic pieces are never more nor less than exactly what they are'.... wrote Lothar Preen in his Melbourne concert review....'but perfectly realised'. With film stills, misleading sleeve-notes and storyboard by the Diogenesian recluse Frank Key.
http://www.z6records.nl/VRIL.html
http://www.xs4all.nl/~lukas/english/vril.html
http://www.rermegacorp.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?
http://www.myspace.com/vrilenergy
http://www.edwardperraud.com/Home.html
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