Klaus Harmony
Encyclopedia
Klaus Harmony is a comic fiction
al composer of porn music for 1970s and 1980s European adult movies. Created by UK soundtrack composer, Matthew Strachan
(also creator of the theme music of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire), the character's life story is told though music, images and an extensive series of spoof biographical entries on a multimedia website. While the site itself contains no explicit content, the composer's life and works are presented by alluding to a fictional movie world complete with filmography, discography, and numerous peripheral characters, including a biographer and musicologist.
Following the launch of the website on 2007, both the character and the music have received mentions in popular blogs such as boingboing, thrillist.com and publications such as the LA Times. and the UK's Guardian newspaper
The music has been used in the Miramax motion picture, Extract, and the BBC television adaptation of Martin Amis
's Money.
, Disco
, Europop
, and occasionally straying into styles more akin to 1960s and '70s Detective and Spy-Thriller
movie scores. Each of the tracks featured on the complete works are taken from the wider discography of Klaus Harmony, attributed to one of the several fictional movie soundtracks, and afforded sleeve notes, intentionally pretentious in tone.
, Kim Ismay, Philip Pope
and Tim Whitnall
have contributed voice work on the recordings along with Strachan himself and his wife, author, Bernadette Strachan
.
Klaus Harmony's background is presented as being in pop music, having spent his childhood in Berlin accompanying his mother, Lotte Schmitt, a cabaret performer, on accordion at street corners. The aspiring musician then moves to the Soho district of London in 1959, forming two accordion-led pop bands before meeting pop impressario Peter Wilde. Harmony's band subsequently becomes successful in the US and, in the late 1960s, rebrands itself as 'Kinky Roosevelt', a progressive, heavy rock band.
Following the breakup of Kinky Roosevelt, Klaus Harmony returns to Europe and meets Friedrich Wohlfäht, an aspiring filmmaker with a background as a photographer for clothing catalogs. As a creative and business partnership they go on to make eleven films including Die Grosse Brustwarze Karnival, Die Sins des Apostles, and The Ladies Man.
Throughout his career, Klaus is married five times to Nerys Stokes, Claudia Piffenhöle (with whom he has a son, Helmut), Theda Wetzel, Lola Schlipp and Suzanne Watkins-Robb, the only spouse to survive him. The most striking moment of his career cames with Gefährliche Brüste (1979), which, in "Wohlfäht's uncompromising style", depicts the death of Harmony’s fourth wife, Lola Schlipp, in a plane crash. Suzanne Watkins-Robb plays the role of Lola, and marries the composer a year later in 1980. Following Friedrich Wohlfäht's death in 1981, Klaus Harmony's career sees a decline and he returns to London with Suzanne and Helmut where he is presumed to be killed in an "unexplained explosion" at a London used record store.
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
al composer of porn music for 1970s and 1980s European adult movies. Created by UK soundtrack composer, Matthew Strachan
Matthew Strachan
Matthew Strachan is an English composer and songwriter.His best known work is the music for the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with his father Keith...
(also creator of the theme music of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire), the character's life story is told though music, images and an extensive series of spoof biographical entries on a multimedia website. While the site itself contains no explicit content, the composer's life and works are presented by alluding to a fictional movie world complete with filmography, discography, and numerous peripheral characters, including a biographer and musicologist.
Following the launch of the website on 2007, both the character and the music have received mentions in popular blogs such as boingboing, thrillist.com and publications such as the LA Times. and the UK's Guardian newspaper
The music has been used in the Miramax motion picture, Extract, and the BBC television adaptation of Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
's Money.
Music
The music, released in the form of several volumes of "Klaus Harmony's complete works", is an elaborate and extensive pastiche of porn music and features idiosyncratic imperfections such as tape noise, vinyl crackle and dropouts. The individual tracks are largely instrumental and the style of music encompasses much of what would have been popular throughout Klaus Harmony's "career", incorporating FunkFunk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, Disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
, Europop
Europop
Europop refers to a style of pop music that first developed in today's form in Europe, throughout the late 1970s. Europop topped the charts throughout the 1980s and ’90s...
, and occasionally straying into styles more akin to 1960s and '70s Detective and Spy-Thriller
Spy fiction
Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
movie scores. Each of the tracks featured on the complete works are taken from the wider discography of Klaus Harmony, attributed to one of the several fictional movie soundtracks, and afforded sleeve notes, intentionally pretentious in tone.
Collaborators and Contributors
A number of artists have contributed to the Klaus Harmony recordings. Actors Stephen Carlile, Martin CrewesMartin Crewes
-Early life:Crewes was born in London. He moved to Australia when he was 10 years of age, and attended the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, in Perth. Other notable graduates of WAAPA include Hugh Jackman, Lisa McCune and Frances O'Connor...
, Kim Ismay, Philip Pope
Philip Pope
Philip R. J. Pope is a British composer and actor. He was educated at Downside School and New College, Oxford.-Performer:He appeared in the Oxford Revue in Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1978 and 1979, both with Angus Deayton...
and Tim Whitnall
Tim Whitnall
Tim Whitnall , is a British actor, musician, playwright and screenwriter probably best known for his portrayal of the alien Angelo on the British CITV sitcom Mike and Angelo....
have contributed voice work on the recordings along with Strachan himself and his wife, author, Bernadette Strachan
Bernadette Strachan
Bernadette Strachan is an English author of popular women's fiction and among the more popular writers of "chick lit." Her first novel, The Reluctant Landlady, was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 2004 since when she has published a further three novels. with the same publisher...
.
Character Biography
In tandem with a pulp biography by Godfrey Gilliam (a fictional, mediocre Rock music journalist), published on the Klaus Harmony website, the music of Klaus Harmony is also subjected to analytical review in the form of liner notes by the equally fictional and over-serious musicologist, Walter Samuel. Additionally the life and work of the composer is discussed by 'former friend', Jan Sink, in a weblog.Klaus Harmony's background is presented as being in pop music, having spent his childhood in Berlin accompanying his mother, Lotte Schmitt, a cabaret performer, on accordion at street corners. The aspiring musician then moves to the Soho district of London in 1959, forming two accordion-led pop bands before meeting pop impressario Peter Wilde. Harmony's band subsequently becomes successful in the US and, in the late 1960s, rebrands itself as 'Kinky Roosevelt', a progressive, heavy rock band.
Following the breakup of Kinky Roosevelt, Klaus Harmony returns to Europe and meets Friedrich Wohlfäht, an aspiring filmmaker with a background as a photographer for clothing catalogs. As a creative and business partnership they go on to make eleven films including Die Grosse Brustwarze Karnival, Die Sins des Apostles, and The Ladies Man.
Throughout his career, Klaus is married five times to Nerys Stokes, Claudia Piffenhöle (with whom he has a son, Helmut), Theda Wetzel, Lola Schlipp and Suzanne Watkins-Robb, the only spouse to survive him. The most striking moment of his career cames with Gefährliche Brüste (1979), which, in "Wohlfäht's uncompromising style", depicts the death of Harmony’s fourth wife, Lola Schlipp, in a plane crash. Suzanne Watkins-Robb plays the role of Lola, and marries the composer a year later in 1980. Following Friedrich Wohlfäht's death in 1981, Klaus Harmony's career sees a decline and he returns to London with Suzanne and Helmut where he is presumed to be killed in an "unexplained explosion" at a London used record store.
Character Filmography
- Elektrische Lippen (1969)
- Wunderchrotchen (1970)
- Die Grosse Brustwarze Karnival (1971)
- Die Sins Des Apostles (1972)
- Chenois (1973)
- Who Needs Dialogue? (1975)
- The Ladies Man (1977)
- Meet Miss Jozette (1978)
- Gefähliche Brüste (1979)
- Schaften Lieben (1980)
- Die Sexocist (1981)
- Rumpenmeister (1982)
Recordings
- The 1970s Porn Collection, Polytron Records (2010)
- Oeuvre Cinq, Judd Music Ltd (2010)
- Oeuvre 4, Judd Music Ltd (2009)
- Oeuvre Derde, Judd Music Ltd (2008)
- Oeuvre Zwei, Judd Music Ltd (2007)
- Oeuvre I, Judd Music Ltd (2006)