Beginning June 16th, and then every two weeks until September 22nd, 2009, a scene from the first half of the radio play featuring the band Pere Ubu titled, Bring Me The Head Of Ubu Roi (Version 2), will be podcast for free download at hearpen.com. Pere Ubu's online-only record store, hearpen.com, is administered by Smog Veil Records.
This series of eight podcasts covers the first three acts of the six act radio play that was inspired by the songs on Pere Ubu's forthcoming Hearpen Records CD titled, Long Live Père Ubu!, (digital release via hearpen.com is available September 14, 2009). The idea to record a radio play was conceived as a way of managing the silence between songs in the concert set for the album so that the spoken word is manipulated and mixed with electronic ambience and transformed into a unique musical style of its own. The script for the radio play, adapted by David Thomas from Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (King Ubu), is also Version 2 of a theatrical production, featuring Pere Ubu, also called Bring Me The Head Of Ubu Roi that premiered in its original version at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, April 25 and 26 2008.
Embedded in the podcasts are songs from the Long Live Père Ubu! album, as well as dialog and electronic ambience. Sarah Jane Morris (ex-Communards, Happy End) performs the role of Mère Ubu, partnering Thomas who performs as the character Père Ubu. Members of the band supply the voices of other characters in the play.
Jarry's proto-Absurdist stage play (which premiered in Paris in 1896) gave the band its name, and supplied the inspiration for the songs on Long Live Père Ubu! In its day the play provoked riots in the theatre and a national scandal. A vicious and satiric re-telling of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Jarry's work lambastes do-gooder monsters and the survival of the Unfit.
Pere Ubu is David Thomas on vocals, Keith Moliné on guitar, Robert Wheeler
on EML synthesizer and theremin, Michele Temple on bass, and Steve Mehlman
on drums.
The eight scenes to be released episodically in the form of podcasts are:
1. Act 1 Scene 1 (5:04) Release date: June 16.
2. Act 1 Scene 2 (1:16) Release date: June 30.
3. Act 1 Scene 3 (6:07) Release date: July 14.
4. Act 2 Scene 1 (4:12) Release date: July 28
5. Act 2 Scene 2a (8:13) Release date: August 11.
6. Act 2 Scene 2b (3:20) Release date: August 25.
7. Act 2 Scene 3 (4:10) Release date: Sept 8.
8. Act 3 (4:07) Release date: Sept 22.
Pere Ubu live (all dates may be subject to change):
Sat., 7/11 at CK Zamek (Animator Festival) in Poznan´ (Poland)
Fri., 9/25 at ICA in London (England)
Visit Pere Ubu online at http://www.ubuprojex.net/
and Smog Veil at http://smogveil.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment