Aghiatrias
Encyclopedia
Aghiatrias is a Czech
"integrated music" ensemble from Prague
. The band consisted of composer Vladimír Hirsch
and sound engineer Tom Saivon and was started in 1999 as an offshoot of their sympho-industrial band Skrol
. Their music is based on an integration of contemporary classical music
, dark ambient
and ambient industrial music. The name "Aghiatrias" is the collocation of Greek
words αγία (saint) and τριάς (trinity). Aghiatrias finished their activity in 2007.
(composer
, keyboards
, samplers
, drums
, vocals, computer) and Tom Saivon (noise generator
s, samplers
, computer, lyrics) joined their creative efforts in this project. Their goal was an extrapolation and combination of contemporary classical music
(Hirsch) and noise (Saivon) tendencies within Skrol
, which was eventually, through mutual infiltration by basic theses and antitheses
, brought to life as a fully homogeneous structure by both members of the group. After more than five years of existence, the band is widely known in the Europe
an industrial scene and regularly performs at prestigious European festivals. The ensemble regularly appeared in Czechia, Poland
, Slovakia
, the Netherlands
and Germany
. They also went on a long and successful tour in the US in June 2001. The shows in New York
, Boston
, Portland
(Maine
), Cleveland, Pittsburgh
, Detroit, Chicago
, Atlanta and other towns were mostly a combination of programs by SKROL and AGHIATRIAS. Singer Martina Sanollová (mezzo-soprano) also participates in Aghiatrias' recordings and live performances.
Aghiatrias recordings are typical fully conceptual works. Their first album, Field Mass (2000) is formally a classical opus, with all standard liturgical elements, but settled within a simple central plot framework.
The second album, Epidaemia vanitatis (Epidemy Of Vanity) (2002), the first release on their own label (Integrated Music Records) is, from the viewpoint of musical form, another step towards integrating tonality
into atonality
and classical
into postindustrial. ¨
Their third album Regions Of Limen, finished in August 2003, represents a kind of „aghiatrisation“ of Hirsch’s solo project DE REGIONIBUS LIMINIS. An extensive dark ambient
album devoted to the theme of subliminal
perception and its fictive musical application. The album was released in March 2004 by the Czech label Epidemie Records.
The fourth album Ethos is a return to thematic work, accomplishing its own concept of so-called "integrated music" that represents a confrontation in broad dimensions of contemporary classics, dark-ambient, noise and industrial.
Live:
Compilations:
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
"integrated music" ensemble from Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. The band consisted of composer Vladimír Hirsch
Vladimír Hirsch
Vladimír Hirsch is a Czech avantgarde composer, integrating industrial and dark ambient music with modern classical composition. Besides creating solo works, he is the founding member and leader of Skrol, Aghiatrias and various other projects...
and sound engineer Tom Saivon and was started in 1999 as an offshoot of their sympho-industrial band Skrol
Skrol
Skrol is a Czech avant garde martial industrial band from Prague, formed in autumn 1995.- Members :* Vladimír Hirsch - composer, keyboards , drums, vocal* Martina Sanollová - vocal, piano, electric harp, effects and...
. Their music is based on an integration of contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
, dark ambient
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology...
and ambient industrial music. The name "Aghiatrias" is the collocation of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
words αγία (saint) and τριάς (trinity). Aghiatrias finished their activity in 2007.
History and works
In autumn 1999, Vladimír HirschVladimír Hirsch
Vladimír Hirsch is a Czech avantgarde composer, integrating industrial and dark ambient music with modern classical composition. Besides creating solo works, he is the founding member and leader of Skrol, Aghiatrias and various other projects...
(composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, keyboards
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, samplers
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, vocals, computer) and Tom Saivon (noise generator
Noise generator
A Noise generator is a piece of equipment used to produce random electrical noise, in order to test how electrical equipment may react to noise, or to measure the intensity of noise....
s, samplers
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, computer, lyrics) joined their creative efforts in this project. Their goal was an extrapolation and combination of contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
(Hirsch) and noise (Saivon) tendencies within Skrol
Skrol
Skrol is a Czech avant garde martial industrial band from Prague, formed in autumn 1995.- Members :* Vladimír Hirsch - composer, keyboards , drums, vocal* Martina Sanollová - vocal, piano, electric harp, effects and...
, which was eventually, through mutual infiltration by basic theses and antitheses
Antithesis
Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition...
, brought to life as a fully homogeneous structure by both members of the group. After more than five years of existence, the band is widely known in the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an industrial scene and regularly performs at prestigious European festivals. The ensemble regularly appeared in Czechia, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. They also went on a long and successful tour in the US in June 2001. The shows in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Portland
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
(Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
), Cleveland, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
, Detroit, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Atlanta and other towns were mostly a combination of programs by SKROL and AGHIATRIAS. Singer Martina Sanollová (mezzo-soprano) also participates in Aghiatrias' recordings and live performances.
Aghiatrias recordings are typical fully conceptual works. Their first album, Field Mass (2000) is formally a classical opus, with all standard liturgical elements, but settled within a simple central plot framework.
The second album, Epidaemia vanitatis (Epidemy Of Vanity) (2002), the first release on their own label (Integrated Music Records) is, from the viewpoint of musical form, another step towards integrating tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
into atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
and classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
into postindustrial. ¨
Their third album Regions Of Limen, finished in August 2003, represents a kind of „aghiatrisation“ of Hirsch’s solo project DE REGIONIBUS LIMINIS. An extensive dark ambient
Dark ambient
Dark ambient is a subgenre of ambient music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones. Although it had its roots in the 1970s, Dark ambient emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable Effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology...
album devoted to the theme of subliminal
Subliminal
Subliminal may refer to:* Subliminal stimuli* Subliminal , Israeli rapper and producer* Subliminal , an electronic music label...
perception and its fictive musical application. The album was released in March 2004 by the Czech label Epidemie Records.
The fourth album Ethos is a return to thematic work, accomplishing its own concept of so-called "integrated music" that represents a confrontation in broad dimensions of contemporary classics, dark-ambient, noise and industrial.
Discography
Conceptual albums:- Field Mass, CatchArrow Recordings, CDR, 2000 (47 min.)
- Epidaemia Vanitatis, Integrated Music Records, CD, 2002 (45 min.)
- Regions of Limen, Epidemie Records, CD, 2004 (69 min.)
- Ethos, Epidemie Records, CD, 2006, (54 min.)
- Reliquary, Integrated Music Records, CD, 2007, (39 min.)
Live:
- Live at Middle East, live recording from CambridgeCambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
(MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
), USA, „Middle East ClubThe Middle East (nightclub)The Middle East is a live music venue, bar and restaurant in the Central Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Having featured a huge variety of musicians since 1987, the establishment, with its upstairs and downstairs rooms, "is the nexus of metro Boston's rock-club scene for local and touring...
“ (21 June 2001), CDR, 2001 (50 min.)
Compilations:
- A Rainy November Day in Wroclaw, Amplexus Records, CD, 2005, (comp. „Syncrasia“)
External links and references
- http://www.vladimirhirsch.com
- http://www.epidemie.cz/aghiatrias
- http://www.beautyandpain.com/reviews.htm
- http://www.immanence-records.com/mailordernew.htm
- http://perso.wanadoo.fr/al.demon/reviews.htm