Jon Rose – Vivisection [LP] (1988, AufRuhr Records)

 

Jon Rose is a highly versatile violin player despite the fact that that tends to be forgotten. A maverick, subversive character and one of the most colorful artists in new music, Rose is mostly known for his many experimental radio dramas, conceptual stage pieces, deconstructed/reinvented string instruments, and a wicked sense of humor. Most of his works are threaded with cross-thematic elements (in a way that strongly recalls Frank Zappa's own "conceptual continuity") that elaborate a revision of violin history. Rose is also an active free improviser with groups in Australia and Germany.

 
Rose grew up in England. He studied the violin from age seven until 15, at which point he turned his back on formal music education. He began to play professionally at the beginning of the 1970s and spent most of the decade taking up every gig offered to him. He performed rock, country, jazz, and contemporary music, and even made commercial session work. This contact with the popular repertoire of each genre allowed him to absorb every trademark lick, every cliché that would later feed his John Zorn-like stylistic jump-around compositional technique. Halfway through the 1970s, Rose moved to Australia. He soon became a catalyst for the burgeoning avant-garde scene and recorded his first albums there for the label Fringe Benefit. 

 
By 1985, Rose moved to Berlin. In the course of the next few years, his art literally blossomed. Before he left, he had delivered to the ABC (the Australian state radio) a 90-minute series entitled "The Anatomy of the Violin," but it is in Berlin where he developed his very peculiar sense of humor, style juxtaposition, and historical fraud in a series of hörspiels. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]

 

 

Label: AufRuhr Records – 67013 

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album 

Country: Germany 

Released: 1988 

Style: Free Improvisation, Experimental, Contemporary 

 

Tracklist: 

A1 Paganini's Surgery 2:42 

A2 Exit Dance 3:18 

A3 Budapest In Flames 2:24 

A4 First Cut 3:19 

A5a The Believers (1) 6:26 

A5b The Believers (2) 2:01 

A6 Open Wounds 2:51 

A7 Another CD Accident 1:27 

B1 Transfusion 3:02 

B2 Madonna And Child 7:31 

B3 Do The Razor Blade 0:38 

B4 Amazing Cage 6:32 

B5 Panic Button 1:16 

B6 Taking A String For A Walk 3:59 

B7 Straight Batting / Bowing 3:21

 

Notes: 

Tracks A1, A5b, B3 & B5 come from a Radio Hörspiel "Paganini And The Reverend Ike". Track B7 mixed in Australia. The Other pieces were recorded live at concerts or sessions in Berlin, January 1987. 

 

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