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In Memoriam Jhonn Balance (von...


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Wörter: 767
Erstellt: 22.11.2004


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Autor: Dominik Tischleder

Unten folgender Text zum Gedenken an Jhonn Balance stammt von WILLIAM (Bill) BREEZE, der als virtuoser Violinist auch auf einigen COIL, CURRENT 93 und PSYCHIC TV/SPLINTER TEST Tonträgern zu hören ist.
In einem "zweiten Leben" ist Breeze als "Hymenaeus Beta" gegenwärtig Vorsitzender des alterwürdigen Ordo Templo Orientis, kurz O.T.O. genannt.

Es sei noch erwähnt, daß Breeze in jungen Jahren mit zwei hochinteressanten Künstlern arbeitete. Zum Einen mit ANGUS MACLISE, dem ersten Schlagzeuger der VELVET UNDERGROUND, der - so die Legende - aus der Band ausstieg, als er mitbekam, daß seine Mitmusiker für einen Auftritt Geld als Gage annahmen. Später sollte er wunderschöne, mystische Drones in Anlehnung an die Fluxus und Minimal Musik Bewegung kreieren (Tipp!).
Breeze lernte auch bei HARRY SMITH, einem Beatnik- Poeten, O.T.O. Bischof und experimentellen Filmemacher (nicht nur in der Hinsicht Mentor KENNETH ANGERS), ohne dessen Sammlung an alten Folkstücken, zusammengefasst in der "Anthology Of American Folkmusic" es kein US- Folk Revival mit Namen wie Joan Baez, Bob Dylan und Co möglich gewesen wäre. Der große ethnologische Musikverlag Smithsonian Folkways geht auf ihn zurück.
--

IN MEMORIAM. Jhonn Balance

IN MEMORIAM. Jhonn Balance (aka John Balance and Geff Rushton) died at home
on November 13 in a fall, leaving the music world and the wider world of
magick without one of its most gifted and vivid voices. He was born Geoffrey
Laurence Burton on 16th February 1962 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, later
adopting the Rushton surname of his stepfather, and was educated at Lord
Willliams School. He studied voice and vocal technique with Saral Bohm, wife
of the physicist David Bohm. He was a member of 23 Skidoo, Psychic TV, Zos
Kia, and Current 93, and in 1983 founded Coil with Throbbing Gristle
cofounder Peter Christopherson. They embarked together on one of the most
enduring and fruitful art/life partnerships in music. Balance was a natural
occultist from youth -- he has left amusing accounts of his intensive astral
experiences while still a public schoolboy. He became a serious student of
all occult literature, and drew on this in his music, artfully fusing
esoterics with a succession of musical forms and styles over more than two
decades. The imagery and symbolism of his lyrics were however entirely his
own -- he never resorted to plundering the symbolic language of others,
though he enjoyed occasional veiled references. His output is all the more
rich for his originality, making him a primary source in his own right, with
passionate fans among occultists and pagans of all persuasions. His vocal
technique was relentlessly experimental -- where many singers settle on a
signature style and vocal range, he continually pushed the limits of
expression to find fresh outlets for his visions. The output of Coil ranges
from the avant-garde (including soundtracks for experimental filmmaker Derek
Jarman), to acerbic reflections of passing trends in popular music (such as
the brilliantly sardonic Love¹s Secret Domain album), to experimental
neoclassical and folk (as with the Solstice/Equinox series), to extended
excursions into pure electronica (like the recent Musick to Play in the Dark
albums). Many bands and composers have cited Coil as an influence. Balance
frequently collaborated with others, as guest artist, remixer and producer.
Commissioned work by Coil includes a soundtrack for Clive Barker¹s
Hellraiser (rejected by the studio as too frightening), and important
remixes of Nine Inch Nails (see the title sequence music for the film Seven,
and the album Further Down the Spiral). After an initial appearance in
Berlin in 1983, Coil was a studio group until they premiered a
sophisticated live show at London¹s Royal Festival Hall in 2000, commencing
a highly successful series of tours that tested and proved Balance¹s
abilities as a performer. Balance was a gifted writer whose work remains to
be collected and published. A connoisseur of all things strange and
beautiful, over the years he and Peter Christopherson built the important
Threshold House collection of Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley
artworks, often loaning paintings to shows. Balance struggled all his life
with the twin diseases of depression and alcoholism -- the latter
contributed to his accidental death -- but he drew on this pain as well as
his great joy in living to produce art that was all the more true, immediate
and poignantly relevant. An account of his life and work is David Keenan,
England¹s Hidden Reverse: The Secret History of the Esoteric Underground
(London: SAF Publishing, 2003). A man of immense talent, learning, charm and
generosity, he is survived by his ex-partner and lifelong collaborator Peter
Christopherson, and his partner, the artist Ian Johnstone.

 
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