LP – Manoeuvres d’Automne

produced & engineered 1987 by Fizzè at the Mensch House

first released in 1987 as LP AGR 002

1996 it was re-released as a ‘two-LP’s-inOne’ CD, together with the “Kulu Hatha Mamnua” LP, recorded and released 1986 as LP AGR 001

eine ähnliche “Produktbeschreibung” für ‘Manoeuvres d’Automne’ wäre in etwa die gleiche wie für die erste LP “Kulu…”.
Ausser, dass AGR 001 eine Ansammlung war von Stücken, die im Zeitraum von 1980 – 1986 entstanden, während “Manoeuvres” als dezidiertes Konzeptalbum entstanden ist. Nach der Veröffentlichung der ersten LP war Dizzi ziemlich ungehalten, dass sein Name nicht einmal auf dem Cover stand (eigentlich steht auf der ersten LP überhaupt nichts, nicht einmal Titel!… 🙂 )…
Wir verblieben folgendermassen:
anstatt zu streiten, wurde vereinbart, dass wir zusammen eine zweite Platte machen wollten, aber diesmal mehrheitlich unter der “Aegide” von Gilles.
Der “Erfolg” der Platte sollte dann den Weg weisen, wessen Handschrift die dritte Platte haben wird… (‘Kulu’ wurde 4’000 x gepresst, ‘Manoeuvres’ verblieb bei einer Erstpressung von 800 Stück…
Selbstverständlich blieb Gilles auch beim Nachfolger (“Peeni Waali”) ein wertvoller Mitspieler, auch wenn er mittlerweile sein eigenes Studio aufbaute und an Manoeuvres d’Automne II arbeitete…
Die Aufnahmen der vorliegenden ‘Manoeuvres d’Automne 1’ verliefen genau gleich wie Kulu (gleiches Studio, gleiche Herangehensweise), nur benötigte die Produktion mit dezidiertem Fokus auf ein Konzept diesmal nur 1 Jahr. Hauptsächlicher Ideenlieferant war diesmal Dizzi, welcher seine ‘eigenen’ Mitspieler mit einbrachte und auch vorsah, das Ganze auf der Bühne zu performen (Manoeuvres d’Automne spielte einmal in Neuenburg und einmal in Mels bei Sargans)…

Büchsenöffner mit Gebrauchsanleitung:

Wo sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen, taucht nach einem Geburtsschrei ein majestätischer Taj Mahal auf…
Frösche begleiten singende Presslufthämmer zu ruderschlagender Rythmik (“Marécage”)…
eine einsam auslaufenden Badewanne klagt ihr Lied der kolumbianischen Flöte (“Palöngawoya”)…
selbstgebaute Instrumente (“Odessa”) oder ein heteroklites Sammelsurium von Küchenutensilien (“Cuisine”) metamorphosieren zu druckvollem Schlagwerk…
Universal-Dilettanten und Breitmaul-Kaliber-Musiküsse  verschachteln in brachial-friedlichster Ton- und Unart (“Colorace”) kompakte Kollagen (“00 Nul”) zu symphonischen Bandwürmern…
gänse_gehäutete Ambient-Inflektionen (“Mutation”, “Le Soufflé d’Odo”) schlängeln sich durch/hinter/über/unter organisch-animistische Rythmen (“Animist”)…
ein Föhn fegt durch ein Phönomen (“Homo Sapionce”)…
das Harmonium mutiert zum Hormonium…
archaische Bala- und Lithofone (“C’est Loin”) liebäugeln mit avantgardistischen und klassischen Elementen (“Un peu d’air”, “Futur Intérieur”)…
hühnerhäutiges Bretterknarren (“Mer Morte”) versus rauchig-magisches Tenorsaxophon (“Mustafa PumPum”)…
Lockpfeifen versus verträumtes Akkordeon (“Dérive”)…
Windschutzscheibenwischer versus magische Posaunentöne (“Vision of Hope”)…
Progressives (“La Mort Guette”) versus Minimalistisches (“Assimosis”)…
Humor, ohne den es keine seriöse Musik gibt (“Bonus Scratch”!) bringt Musiker aus den gegensätzlichsten Richtungen von ihren Pfaden ab, überlistet sie, lässt sie über den eigenen Schatten springen…
74 Minuten hybride Weltmusik…
handgestrickter ‘Art Brut’…
Elektronika für Handbetrieb…
Filmmusik für jedes einzelne Ohr – nicht mono-kompatibel…
… entstanden zwischen 1981 – 1986…

– ein europäisches Novum! – :

Verpackung bedruckt auf 100% Hanfkarton…

…neu bearbeitet für CD-release 1996, zusätzlich instrumentiert mit ausgefuchstem Remix und Mastering…

In  the early 80ies, I worked briefly in Jeddha (Saudia Arabia) and the experience boiled down to “Kulu shey farachni mamnua” (all that’s fun is forbidden) or – in short – “Kulu Hatha Mamnua”. There was not much else to do there but music…

It’s always been the connectivity (with people) that all creations took birth from. Music, i.e. the making of music, was essentially ‘only’ a tool to create joy, the sole meaning of being. And joy then resonating until more connectivity inspires for more creative results and so forth… a tantric cycle of sorts…
“Cuisine” e.g. started off in a kitchen, I helped out as an aid, when I noticed that the chef kept on banging, tickling, wiping on his pots and pans while constantly focussing on the quality of his work. His ‘percussive stirring’ had this eerie, impeccable, irresistible GROOVE to it, although he insisted, he wasn’t “a musician”, he never actively made music. However, I developed a form of “lead sheet”, anyone can read provided one can count…
This genuine form of “notation” was born out of the necessyty to communicate with “non”-musicians, who have no formal training of sheetmusic (not even lead-sheet notation)…
So here you’ll find the “logistic form” how e.g. the chef de cuisine worked “on demand” and became “chef on “Cuisine”
Hence we played some patterns with pots and pans (sometimes filled with water), shook pepper mills, rattled a whisk, klicked ladles on concrete, snapped the butcher knife on the kitchen table’s edge etc., just making “rounds” of measures with each pattern and off came the track “Cuisine”. While the re-release of this LP became a topic, I hosted an Iranian santur-player who bided his time here practicing his instrument. The eerie quarter-scale tunings plus his subtle hammering summed up the initial “Cuisine”_experiment from almost 40 years earlier into “Nouvelle Cuisine”… nothing lost and plenty gained with another joyful noise.
This form of “connectivity” often times merged into solid friendship: Pascal (the kitchen chef, R.I.P.) became an eternal friend, his kitchen pots and pans an ongoing tribute/asset in many current projects…

Another “episode of connectivity” comes very plain with “Kayanika”… (in Swiss German it means “I had no idea”…) :
I often host and record ethnological musicians who come to record more for the sake of documenting a culture or some rites and rituals within a culture. On one of such occasions I had the pleasure to meet a quartet from Ouganda in which I “spotted” Sylvia as an inquisitive musician and fantastic voice. She recorded an epos (for children) and I asked if I may use excerpts for my musical_experimental_joyful noises. This – I explained – as an obolus to our own culture (i.e. being waylayers and/or mercenaries -, with all these castles uphills show so well: when a caravan would head from north to south, the ‘lords of that parish’ vultured down to squeeze some duty/obolus.) Sylvia laughed and agreed, hence every now and then, excerpts of that epos pop up in  mensch music pieces. Another “ukulele”player asked, if he can contribute, too, so – without immediate concept at hand – I had him play an ostinato on his little instrument for 4 minutes (he done 8 minutes enjoying the trance-like vibe it gave off)… now, being commissioned to dig out the old master tapes for a possible re-release of “Kulu”, it stirred up the idea of why not doing new “Kulu Hatha Mamnua” pieces… It made me reconnect with long-time “co-pilot” Gilles (Rieder) and he’d ask: so what you got for me to play ‘pon?
I remembered an oil-drum waltz that didn’t make it on the choice for this LP (Animist) and picked it up again. Miraculously it marvellously meshed with a.m. ostinato and off the experience started. Since “Animist” wasn’t chosen to be, I reused the balafon, kalimba and other percussion bits/elements of it, added new ones, amongst which Sylvia’s voice and some more ethnological bits and joyful noises and here’s “Kayanika”. I still don’t know what Sylvia’s children lullaby means, but I can very well feel that it eventually is a very pleasant tale of connectivity!

Homo Sapionce, became not only another „remaster“, but benefits from the same modus vivendi of connectivity:
originally, „Homo Sapionce“ started with an experiment: from a stay in HongKong (early 1981), I brought home the first ever 4-Track cassette recorder (Tascam’s ‘Syncasset 234’). It had this wicked green button on the right, labelled ‘pitch’, i.e. a vari-speed, making the machine go faster and/or slower (even while recording!). Why not just hum very softly for a little while and turn that pitch from slowest to fastest and back and then hum a second track from fastest to slowest and back. 4 tracks of such ‚wave_humming‘ made an eerie bordun, indeed… When Gilles came in the next morning, he couldn’t make anything of it, but showed me some native (plains) indian chants he wanted to ‘recreate’. Said and done. To achieve that extra humpf (on ‘hey-a-hey-a…’), hefty dancing/jumping is required. So, two mad geezers with headphones hopping around, shouting and banging some kitchen pans were seen from the outside by people in the street staring through the window with open mouths… The result – as much as the fun we had – is history…! The next experiment was to overdub that (Revox ¼ inch) recording with the mix of my 4-tracks drone and that was ‘Homo, ça pionce’ (pioncer is french for ‘kipping’)! I suggested we’d record coupla friends, remaking that hum-drone with real voices, but we didn’t find willing victims to do so… until 35 years later: I had 6 people from Tuva (for ethnic recordings I do every once so often), so I asked them if they’d give me an obolus in the form of such hum… adding wife and sons to it, the drone became all the more fantastic… graced it with more sonic assets and finished it off with this great Tuvan ode to the mountains, see translation at https://mensch3000.ch/products/sha/