Sunday, May 10, 2009
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HUGO RACE/HELIXED IN BRIEF
Hugo Race is a prolific and visionary performer, musician, writer and producer. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Hugo’s creative journey has given him ‘world citizen’ status, having lived and worked as an independent artist over the course of the last 20 years in Italy, France, Germany, the UK and the USA. If the eternal delta blues, jazz, and punk are his basic references, Hugo’s songwriting draws on pop culture from rock n roll to electronic soundscapes. Hugo defies any easy label and has staked out a creative territory totally his own between rock, experimental and psychedelia. He also writes screenplays and non-fiction.
First introduced to the international stage as a teenage founding member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds (he appears on the debut, “From Her to Eternity”, and features on several other Bad Seed’s cds and various compilations), Hugo then founded the seminal Australian art-punk cult band The Wreckery (1985), released through the White/Hot, Rampant, Citadel and Normal labels. A Wreckery compilation,”Past Imperfect”, was released in 2008 through Memorandum/Fuse Records, (Sydney ) and a national reunion tour followed.
In early 1989 Hugo moved base to Berlin, and Normal Records (Germany) released his debut solo album “Rue Morgue Blues” as the Wall fell, a fact reflected in Hugo’s frequently politically-inspired lyrics. So began two decades based in Europe and the production of 13 Hugo Race & True Spirit albums, the latest of which “53rd State” was released in Australia (Spooky Records) and Europe (Glitterhouse Records) in 2008 to rave reviews.
Hugo is perceived as a cult figure, charismatic and inspired – and he continues to enthrall an ever-expanding international audience. If Hugo’s work maintains a bent towards the moody and experimental side of contemporary music, that doesn’t exclude writing beautiful love songs or meditational mood pieces, and he is sought after by other artists as a producer or to record collaborative projects all over the world.
Currently, Hugo is immersed in preproduction for his feature film project "We Create Tomorrow"......
Some of Hugo’s other music projects include:
the folk Americana of Dirtmusic together with Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts) and Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine), with whom Hugo performed recently at the Festival au Desert in Mali, Africa;
the Italian experimental pop of Sepiatone with Marta Collica (John Parish band), now licensed to Minty Fresh Records, Chicago (www.sepiatone.net);
the sophisticated pop electronica of Rogall’s Electric Circus Sideshow, together with DJ Rogall from Berlin’s Sonar Kollectiv (Perfect Toy Records);
the psychedelic country of Denver-based band Lilium, together with Pascal Humbert (Woven Hand, 16 Horsepower) (Glitterhouse Records);
the ambient electronica of Transfargo, together with Swiss DJ Dimitri de Perrot (RecRec Records);
the conceptual Italian multimedia montage of “Merola Matrix” (Desvelos Records)
Other productions and collaborations include:
Hellhound Brown, Pantaleimon, Klimek, Mick Harvey (Bad Seeds), Robert Forster (Go-Betweens), Rowland S. Howard (Birthday Party), Nikki Sudden (Swell Maps), John Parish (PJ Harvey), Max Sharam, Afterhours, Cesare Basile, Giovanni Ferrario (PJ Harvey), Soteria Bell, Feldmann, Lo.Mo, Alexander Hacke (Einstuerzende Neubauten), Delavega and many, many others. (In fact, there are too many collaborations to mention here and we suggest you refer instead to the discography)
In addition, Hugo has acted, scored and written for several feature films (Ghosts of the Civil Dead, Forbidden Lies, Queen of the Damned, Dogs in Space, In Too Deep, etc.), sung avant-guard contemporary experimental music at the Sydney Opera House (The Hanging of Jean Lee), had his writings published in magazines such as Australia's Overland literary journal and composed and acted for the theatre.
“Urban dreamscapes… elegant trip-hop… ambient noise psychedelia… raw cosmic blues… live garage rock… cinematic melancholia, new wave nostalgia, essential songwriting, post-rock minimalism…” – all these descriptions have been applied to Hugo’s work, best summarised as:
“Hugo Race is a psychedelic prophet, a 360 degree artist who makes compromises with nobody.” (Debaser, Italy, 2005)
Other press excerpts…
“Both alone with a guitar or with his True Spirit, Hugo has toured Europe repeatedly, performing on a vast trajectory from the UK to Greece and was literally one of the first western “underground” acts performing inside the ex- eastern bloc European territories after the fall of the Wall. He has followed a personal musical vision in a series of mutating line-ups that have fused the boundaries between the "primal" (roots) blues and raw electronica - described by London Sounds as "night music of the soul", and by Melody Maker as "industrial-trance-blues". “ (Ludger Kordt, KGB, Germany)
“The stripped to the bone sound of the True Spirit exercises a fascination not exactly reassuring, yet magnetic in its evocation of obscure dangers. Music from the wild side of the street – or better, like walking blind in a war-zone…” (- Gianluca Testani, Mucchio Selvaggio)
“Hugo Race remains one of the great unsung talents of Australian music, and with ‘The Gold Street Sessions’, the leathery old wolf of the nightmare psycho blues returns… The Gold Street Sessions requires a darkened room and an open bottle. Doubt not – this is a dangerous little record from a songwriter who is only ever the real deal” (- Jonathon Alley, MAG Australia)
“With “Dark Summer”, the sublime Sepiatone render another of the innumerable blues mutations already lovingly explored by Race in the arc of his hyperactive discography, deepened by fragile evocations emanting from a couple in extreme symbiosis, traversing a long dark night full of phantoms and desires… that only the charismatic mind of Hugo Race could have invented.”
- Andrea Salvi, Mescalina, Italy 2005
Hugo Race
Helixed Productions
1 comments:
thanks for coming back to sydney :)
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