mY Indie Soul # 25 - Guest Benjamin Page / Rothko

mY Indie Soul # 25
Benjamin Page - Rothko Influences MIX

Benjamin Page is Rothko's electronics man. He records solo as Elite Barbarian and with his brother Tom, also in Rothko , as Rocketnumbernine.

" Music for me is a way to express the depth and emotion of life which, in this increasingly mundane and mediocre
modern society, is tragically overlooked. In music I look to hear and create that which connects directly with the Great Mystery, as the American Indians would say. Music which speaks to the soul but doesn't explain itself entirely...
I think that the pieces of music I have chosen here reflect that search, as does the music of Rothko. "



Download | Listen

Philip Jeck - Fanfares [touch] I had the privilege of playing with Philip at Fear of Jazz, an evening I was promoting in London. His music is incredibly deep and intense and his dedication to his craft is an inspiration.

Robert Wyatt - Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road [Hannibal Records] This from what is probably my
all-time favourite album, Rock Bottom. For me, this album has a unique, mysterious beauty and the production and musicianship are sublime. It's all the more incredible considering he wrote it whilst in hospital with a broken back...

Kate Bush - Under Ice [EMI] I grew up listening to Kate Bush and her music has been a huge influence on me.
I think she is a musical genius and her compositions are immense. I love the depth of emotion that she conveys...

Radiohead - Weird Fishes_Arpeggi [XL] This is a perfect song. Production, musicianship and emotion are faultless.
It really pulls at the heartstrings this one. I have alot of respect for this band.

Rothko - Roads Become Rivers [Lo Recordings] I've included this because it was released before I was a member of the band.
It's a wonderfully panoramic and expansive piece of music - classic Rothko...

Autechre - Vletrmx [Warp] This reminds me of driving through the beautiful wilds of Scotland and thinking, wow, i'd like to make music like that one day...

Fennesz - The Other Face [Touch] I've seen Christian Fennesz live quite a few times now and it's like he is harnessing the power of nature in digital form - a beautiful and overwhelming sound. Makes one see and feel the world in new ways...

Can - Sing Swan Song [Spoon] Started listening to Can when I was 19 and my whole world was turning upside down - it was like hearing the music I'd always wanted to hear but didn't know it exsisted. Can showed me it did...

Ben Frost - Theory of Machines [Bedroom Community] This album reminds me of my own solo work - he's striving (and succeeding)in making challenging, heavy and emotionally involving music that's pushing forwards...

Cliff Martinez - Is That What Everybody Wants? [Trauma (Red)] - I love the remake of Solaris and Cliff Martinez's score is special. A few tears shed listening and watching this...all the complexity and mystery of life right here...

I would like to thank you to Ben for all his patience and time spend and for sending his album as Elite Barbarian " It's Only when you get to the end that all makes sences " out now on Front and Follow

Mp3 | Rothko - Give Every Thing
Mp3 | Elite Barbarian - Less Words
Mp3 | Rocketnumbernine - You Reflect Me (edit).

Elite Barbarian
" It's Only when you get to the end that all makes sences "

One of the strongest electronic beep records you will ever hear, the new record from Elite Barbarian achieves a certain kind of ambience ordinarily/usually harboured by the most strung out and sensitive of electronic acts without using such barbed sonics.

Tickling like the insides of a ZX Spectrum and playing out like the soundtrack of several Atari 2600 games; over the course of 58 minutes the album takes the listener on a journey of unexplored confines electronic beats/beeps often coupled with crazed sick piano licks.

The author of the album is Ben Page who as a member of both Rothko and Rocket No.9 is a seasoned and accomplished composer of modern ambient extracts often emerging from improvisation and instinctive desires and trajectories.

The real strength of this record is the manner in which it achieves being both relentless and relaxed at the same time, tempered and tenacious in its brute meditation. As the atmospherics grow so does the intensity as sonic layers reminiscent of raindrops, pulses and bubbling machinery scour your consciousness almost feeling transient as it interrupts the flow of your immediate activities.

Listened to as a whole the album merges into one great body of work not strictly to be swallowed whole but to accompany any mindset or duty that requires a holding hand to assist concentration and clarity.

By the time it reaches the 16 minute climax “Let’s Go Back To Morse Code” you sense you are coming to the end of being subjected to some kind of subliminal intake and that it is actually quite possible that the beeps could well be pieced together Joe Bonham style to forge together some kind of alien message. You’re unlikely to hear this record at parties, only funerals. JGRAM - Diskant

Rothko music vs Mark Rothko paintings

A few weeks ago i was very lucky to have found Rothko, on one random sunday afternoon jumping from links to links , my first question was about the name Rothko , Mark Beazley told me that Mark Rothko was a russian american painter who sadly committed suicide and that his paintings are one of Rothko influences. Dont need to say that my bellow average knowledge of art was exposed , still its never too late to discover new beautiful things.
This week i got my copy of Rothko new album " Eleven Stages of Intervention " , it has a lot of spaces floating on canvas , they seen to go around the edges and them bounce back into the abstract , i could look at a blank wall and watch shapes taking form , rectangular warm colors , warm read , purple , yellow .
Yesterday decided to look for Mark Rothko paintings , even before a saw the first one i new exactly what to expect from the paintings. Warm Rectangular forms floating on empty spaces.
As a final experience i looked for one paintings for each song of the album , also a way to make a small tribute to Mark Rothko amazing paintings.

Mp3 | Rothko - say something to someone



02 give.every.thing



03 tell your story to the winds



04 be invisible



05 place a star up in the sky



06 weather every storm



07 break the cycle of sorrow



08 sit in silent thought



09 watch the black sun fade



10 light a lantern on the water





A short biography of Latvian-born abstract expressionist artist and anarchist, Mark Rothko.

Mark Rothko
Born Marcus Rothkowitz, 25 September 1903 - Russia, died 25 February 1970 - New York, USA

Marcus Rothkowitz was born to Jewish parents in Czarist Russia on September 25, 1903 in Dvinsk. His father emigrated to America when he was ten.

Having decided to become an artist, he started out painting representational pictures in the Expressionist manner, rendering the drama of contemporary existence in a faceless metropolis. His art then grew freer, in Surrealist-influenced compositions that focus on mythic and biomorphic figures. Finally, in the years between 1949 and his suicide in 1970, he jettisoned representational art altogether and worked solely on the luminous fields – mostly in red and black - for which he became famous.

He spoke four languages- Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, and experienced many cultures which greatly enriched his art.

Dvinsk was a solidly working-class, largely Jewish town of about 100,000. In response to the massive growth in revolutionary ideas, the Czarist authorities bloodily repressed workers – especially Jews – and attacked demonstrations, jailed militants and carried out pogroms.

His father managed to emigrate with Marcus in 1913 where he was soon joined by his family, but died in 1914 in Portland. Portland at the time was the epicentre of revolutionary activity in the US at the time, and the area where the revolutionary syndicalist union the Industrial Workers of the World, was strongest.

Marcus, having grown up around radical workers' meetings, attended meetings of the IWW and with other anarchists like Bill Haywood and Emma Goldman, where he developed strong oratorical skills he would later use in defence of Surrealism. With the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organised debates about it in an atmosphere of extreme repression and wished to become a union organiser.

Later in life with the death of the Russian Revolution, the destruction of the Spanish Revolution by Communists and Fascists, and the rise of the Nazis Rothko became disillusioned as to whether there was any hope for social change. But he claimed "I am still an anarchist"!

He became a painter when he joined Yale university, and changed his name to the Westernised Mark Rothko in 1938.

After building up a considerable body of work, he slit his wrists in 1970, after suffering extreme depression and many years of alcohol abuse.


Vist

Rothko
Mark Rothko

" A Life Lived Elsewhere " Rothko Interview

Based in London, Rothko have been in existence since the spring of 1997, playing their first show at The Hope and Anchor in Islington in August the same year. Their first release was a 7" single, For Danny, on Fierce Panda in the Autumn of '97 and the original line up of Mark, Crawford Blair and Jon Meade, went on to release EP's, singles and three albums, on labels such as Lo Recordings, Bella Union, Foundry, Kraak, Zeal and Narwhal.


The original line up disbanded in 2001 and Mark carried on the Rothko name.

His first release on his own was his collaboration with Japanese ambient master Susumu Yokota, the 12" EP Waters Edge on Jon Tye's Lo Recordings, and then the album 'A Continual Search For Origins' and 7" single Red Cells on the Too Pure label in 2001.

In 2003 Mark started his own label, Trace Recordings, releasing the critically acclaimed Wish For A World Without Hurt album, a collaboration with BLK w/BEAR [aka Washington DC based sound and visual artist Jim Adams] Since 2004, the line up has been Mark with Michael, Ben and Tom. In the last year they've played festivals and toured in the UK, France and Belgium, and in June 2006 released the EP A Personal Account Of Conflict on BadHand Records.

Mp3 Rothko - Sharps Box
Mp3 Rothko - Breaking The Fall

How could you describe Rothko distinctive sounds ?

hi tiago, thank you so much for taking the time to ask some questions .
well, the sound we make differs from the recorded sounds to the live sounds.
but, everything originates from the melodies played on the bass guitar, and practically every track is built from around a bass melody. that is where everything comes from 4 strings and standard tuning can give some limitations, but, i have never strayed from that way of writing music. I just do what i do and see where it takes me from album to album.

What represents " A Life Lived Elsewhere " ?

this is the last 10 years of rothko. from the very beginning, in 1997, to 2006. it covers so many releases and unreleased tracks from those ten years. it was difficult for me to put it all together and to look back over the years, but, the reaction i have had from people so far has been so incredibly positive. it feels like it's been all so worthwhile.

I believe this is quite a difficult question , but after some of the original line up left left in 2001 , could the directions of sounds been different ? Were the ideas different ?

very good question.

i think things have been very different since 2000. if anything, the recordings have become more and more sparse, even though there have been more musicians involved. this is also because i have been recording on computer since then, which has given me greater [total] control over the mixes and production, but, still, i'd like to think that the sound has continued to progress with each release, with each release since 1998. a gradual moving forward.
these things, real change, in any genre, in any way of life, take time to come to fruition. music is no different.

what's the relation between Rothko the painter and Rothko the Band ?

the only reason i named the band Rothko was because he was/is my favourite artist. when i was very young, i used to go and sit in the Rothko room at the original Tate Gallery for hours, just taking in the feel of his paintings. they will always have a deep and lasting effect on me. always.
his work will always continue to have a bearing on the music that i make. for many reasons.

Could you name a few of the most important inspirations for Rothko actual music ?

time , the lack of time , francis bacon [the painter], alberto giacometti
my father , my brother , alcohol , crawford blair , michael donnelly
tom page , ben page

Trace Recording , how much do you feel proud of it ?

pride? i'm not proud of it.

but, of the releases so far, i have been honoured to put them out. and, the ones that are to come, i am incredibly excited to be releasing them.

i'm not proud of anything i've ever done.

What is it like to work with Anne Sulikowski ? She looks incredibly creative and the movies are so beautiful .

Anne has been incredibly kind to allow me to release her wonderful music on Trace Recordings. her album Secret Land will be out this autumn on Trace.

She is a unique artist. working in music, film and photography at such an incredibly high standard. it's important, vital, for me to have anyone on Trace who works in multi media formats and not just in music. and Anne goes way, way beyond that. She's a unique talent, and I feel blessed to be allowed to release her music.

The films that Anne has done for the rothko tracks Give Every Thing and Be Invisible are, simply, incredible.

i think/hope that she will become incredibly successful in both her music and her films and photography.

What are your favorite records at this moment ?

Pink Violins by Marina Hardy on Public Eyesore Records. amazing album. totally unclassifiable, http://www.myspace.com/marinachardy

Pros and cons for bloggers ?

as long as the facts are straight, no cons.

thanks so much Tiago. best wishes, mark.

Thanks a lot Mark for taking time to answer the questions and that Rothko keep bringing us beautiful music.

The recent album, Eleven Stages Of Intervention, is out now on the very wonderful Bip Hop Recods of France

The new Rothko retrospective album, A Life Lived Elsewhere is now available from Trace Recordings


Video | Rothko - Give Everything a documentary about the art of wandering into the future unknown by Anne Sulikowski

Video | Rothko - Be Invisible by Anne Sulikowski

Video | Rothko - Give Everything from the album, 'Eleven Stages of Intervention', live at the Bull & Gate in May 2007.



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