Zeuhl Rhythms

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Zeuhl-Rhythms
Saying something profound about rhythms in Zeuhl-music is a bit difficult, for prejudice says that most of the avant and prog-rock freaks are quite enthusiastic rhythm counters and don't need any teaching about what polyrhythms and triplets etcetera are. Yet thinking that most of the readers of this mag are primarily musically interested and not that much into personal stuff and home stories, here are some things I have discovered about rhythmic structures in Zeuhl-music. Four primal sources of rhythmic invention are as follows: 1. Stravinsky's use of rhythm in compositions like 'Les Noces' (where we can find the 7/4 beat of 'Mekank') and other pieces of his early period that are partly derived from East-European folk music. 2. Minimalistic music and its use of additive rhythms (small rhythmic units, that are repeated and varied) which influenced tracks like 'De Futura'. 3. Marching rhythms as used by Carl Orff in his 'Trionfi' trilogy (for example the start of 'Mekank', where we can find Vander using four takes from 'Trionfo di Afrodite'), but even more traditional types, as the use of snare drum rolls in 'Theusz Hamtaahk' and much of UNIVERS ZERO's music. They are often combined with the first two forms (2/4 against 7/8 etc.). 4. The use of polyrhythms in modal jazz (as during CV's falsetto solo in 'Theusz Hamtaahk'). Yet the element that makes Zeuhl-music unique, at least to me, is the way the rhythm section is dealing with this basic rhythmic material (apart from its often unrivalled physical power and subtlety): on one hand there is a very disciplined playing of the rhythms, on the other hand the fillins at the end of phrases and takes often push the music (and rock music itself) to the edge by sometimes playing totally against the beat or dissolving it for a few moments yet somehow always finding a way back to it in a most surprising way, while the rest of the band has to play its regular patterns with merciless precision. This creates an enormous tension between order and freedom (machine and humanity) which I have not yet discovered in any other type of music - neither in progrock, nor in jazz-rock, nor free jazz, nor in free funk, nor in this century's avant-garde. The best Zeuhl drummers have a striking ability to stretch and compress time to its extremes without destroying it. In this category, the prize goes to Vander for his performance on 'The Last Seven Minutes', closely followed by Daniel Denis' drumming on 'The Funeral Plain'. In my view, ZAO and ART ZOYD are more gifted in other aspects of music: Zao have great melodies and interplay between voice, sax and violin, while Art Zoyd stress the machine-aspect and play their rhythmically complicated pieces so precisely that it becomes magical (more about that in "Zeuhl-melodies"!) 'Hha' is the only piece I know where a band plays triplets consistently against a binary keyboard pattern for about ten minutes. Obviously CV'S drumming is often in triplets (apart from some fillins), while I'm not so sure about the rest. Art Zoyd also play triplets against binary structures in longer pieces, but they sometimes use the help of sequencers (Art Zoyd's 'Cryogense', - both parts on 'Le Mariage du Ciel et de l'Enfer'). I just can't find the track of Magma "using a 5:4 relation (where five equally spaced beats are played in the space of four)" (Chris Cutler in OA! # 13). 'Khntarksz'? The only track I could find that has a totally "queer" rhythmic proportion is Art Zoyd's 'Chemins de Lumire' where the relation is 40:63 (piano:trumpet, time code 9:39 to 10:03), but the trumpet is not played very precisely, and it does not sound like it's been planned.

http://www.orkalarm.co.uk/25_zeuhl_rhythms.htm

24/12/2008

Zeuhl Rhythms

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We can find some interesting similarities between the treatment of rhythms in Zeuhl-music and the understanding of time; for example the use of editing in French film before World War II as described by Gilles Deleuze (the French philosopher). Montage as used in these French movies has a "psychic-quantitative" characteristic. French moviemakers of the time (e.g. l'Herbier, Grmillon, Gance, Epstein) turn away from organic qualities (value-free speaking) and use mathematical relations and periodic alternations of shadow and light, different settings, combined with a feeling for "the sublime". In Art Zoyd's music, almost everything is clearly located in rhythmic terms - even most of the noises are used in a rhythmic manner. Of course their affinity to grandiosity is obvious. If we summarize the changes in Zeuhl music during the last twenty years it's obvious that many of the musicians have turned to more traditional and accepted modes of playing, which is on one hand modal jazz and sixties-type polyrhythmic playing, and on the other hand the stronger emphasis on Minimalistic influences such as Art Zoyd are doing now (not to forget millions of boring Fusion records). Treated marching rhythms (save Daniel Denis and Vander's 'La Marche Celeste') have become rare, as the Stravinsky-influence in combination with marching drums has decreased. Of course no one wants to hear the same stuff all the time - even if it's mid-seventies' Zeuhl, but being a person that lives in constant fear of another blues revival, I doubt that traditionalism should be a way to go for avant-rockers. I would like to hear more Zeuhl-music combined with modern styles like SHUB NIGGURATH who do it with noise music and Offering who dig some advanced esoteric Ambient influences on 'Cosmos' (listen to Klaus Wiese's 'Space' and you'll know what I mean), because I think that contains a lot of possibilities (what about Hardcore, Death Metal, zeuhlificated Hip Hop rhythms - come on people, everything should be better than Fusion in the nineties...). If the musicians don't wake up, I predict that Zeuhl-music will soon have a glorious past and no future.

The Author reworked Zeuhl Rhythms a few years later, along with the Zeuhl Harmonies article in issue 22 Back to Issue # 25 Contents

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http://www.orkalarm.co.uk/25_zeuhl_rhythms.htm

24/12/2008