GREG HEADLY – the operation of the heavens

(CD, 28 angles)

Somebody in my surroundings said, as soon as you start dabbling with electronic sound production yourself, you lose a lot of respect for the majority of electronic musicians. Every good artist has to go through that cycle of producing intimacy and rejection of their idols and ideas. The starting point for an interest in a certain field of art is hard to pin down most of the times, but the route that follows is one of learning and ingestion, and on the way old idols fall down, new ones come up to be discarded again and at some point in the future some idols remain and hopefully a unique and original path to a unique and original artistic vision starts to emerge from the clearing fog. Some artists remain within the network of connotations they drew up the first time around, unable to break free and damned to repeat bland and superficial loops of one trick or style or idea forever. (Especially when starting to listen to what the audience wants…) Others define their idols quite openly and then take turns and detours to get past them. Others define their own strategies, sometimes structural and superficial ones, but if it helps to reach the goal why not? There are many ways and possibilities but most of them are hard to go. For electronic music this pressure is even harder because it is so easy to stay on the wide and open roads.

Greg Headly started out with a heavy fascination for the weird and twisted electronica in the vein of Fennesz and Pita, to name two quite opposite characters and artists, and in his first two albums this influence was detectable more or less everywhere. But, in contrast to a lot of other electronic artists, there was his own signature open and ready in every track as well. “A bulletin on vertigo” was deeply into the structural / complex / post-whatever electronica mentioned above, while “it can leave, it must leave” (both on 28 Angels as well) took the theme of the ocean, wave movements and the tide of organic as its main theme. With “the operation of the heavens” he has taken the tide of the cosmos as his main theme and in the course expanded and widened his artistic approach from sounds to visual and fine arts and lays down a complete piece with a concept that is also fine to listen to.

Turning back to an older piece of music, Gustav Holst’ “The Planets Suite”, and from there to the conceptual ideas that lay behind this piece: astronomy, the theory of cosmic sound (ie. the heaven consists of various layers and if these layers move sounds of cosmic beauty emerge), mystery and the existential feeling of being lost in a vast universe that filled the medieval stargazer and scientist. Gustavus Theodore von Holst, as he was also known, was a classical composer of the more romantic vein, who lived from 1874 to 1934. He was also interested in astronomy, horoscopes and he introduced his understanding of time and space into his music. “The Planets” was his first major work in 1914 and also his most lasting one. It needs a big orchestra and uses what Holst called a wordless choir. There are several recordings of this piece, though I prefer the more classical ones - as I always do with classical music. I am pretty conservative regarding orchestras. So if you want to get down to the base of this CD then try to get the recording with Leonard Bernstein and the NYC philharmonic or Lorin Maazel with the orchestre national du france, which might be the best for verité. (But then I am surely no expert on classical music.)

What Greg Headly does with the seven distinct pieces of music, each on eattributed to a planet, is to take them apart and realign them in his own way and vision. He destroys a lot of the emotions from the original piece but sets them together again in more subtle and ambient ways, making them work more subconsciously then the sometimes rather over the surface original piece. Then he added a video to go along and fine booklet with texts and old pictures to the overall issue. It seems as if Headly immersed himself deeply in the new theme, the new idea or rather world of ideas that opened up to him via the concentration on this singular piece of music. The music on his reworking is full of deep sounds, of swelling and waving, of the tide of the cosmos. Layers and layers of sounds emerge from the dark sky and gently build on each other. Sometimes they are tranquil and peaceful (“Jupiter”) at other times overwhelming and passionate (“Mars”). Once again reviewers will find their refuge in mentioning inner travels to outer space and meditation, but also let the surrounding ideas and concepts influence you in your experience.