Carla Thackrah flute - SeeTea Productions
Elektra Collective Unconscious
Multiple Heads: Return of the Ouroboros
Andy Rantzen (poet/metaphysician)
Carla Thackrah (flute, vocals, loops)
Rudolf Crivici (viola, loops & effects)
Romano Crivici, (piano)
Jess Ciampa (percussion, vocals)
Rudi Crivici, Carla Thackrah, Andy Rantzen, Romano Crivici
In July 2018 the Elektra Collective Unconscious (ECU) began an ambitious and challenging recording project.
Largely avantgarde, ambient jazz, structured improvisations, spoken word; the work defies genres.
The works:
1. Ecclesiastes: Strangers on a Train 20:50m
This work is based on quotes from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, and overheard conversations on a train.
2. InToning 7:30m Based on ever repeating F minor scales
3. The Hydra as a Model of Bureaucratic Dysfunction 21:10 Based on the poet's experience with large government organisations.
4. Crystalline 3:38m A still, strangely cold and crystalline beauty .... an appropriate coda to Hydra.
5. Ouroboros 21:21m Is a serpent that consumes itself as it grows. Ouroboros reveals the metaphysics of life.
About Elektra Collektive Unconscious (ECU):
Sydney-based ECU came into being in response to its members strongly felt need to go beyond the conventional limits, images and accepted boundaries both serious and popular contemporary music making finds itself in. Since ECU's creation in 2016 they continue to explore and create new and living music.
While entirely improvised, they nonetheless work within strong collectively devised structures and forms to create the profoundly rich tapestry of kaleidoscopic colours, rhythms and styles for which they are well known. In so doing, they spontaneously give voice to the collective unconscious, within which our shared culture finds its being.
All highly trained and experienced musicians, they have worked with each other in many different contexts over many years. Ranging from the Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Spaghetti Western Orchestra, through to top contemporary ensembles such as Elektra String Quartet, AZ Music, The Wiggles, Monsieur Camembert, INXS, Jochen Gutsch/Hinterlandt, Astrid Zeman, Barrie White, Itch-e and Scratch-e, Lindsay Kemp, Tango Paradiso, Synergy, Seymour Group, Olivia Newton-John, they have performed throughout Australia, Europe and South America.
Recorded at University of Technology Sydney with sound engineers Jacob Hedges, Jonathon Mendolicchio and Catherine Sloane, 2018.
Mastering by Geoff McGahan in Brisbane, 2019.