ROME - Flowers From Exile [2009]

[byrgh]

uwielbiam Kwiatki i nie zrozumcie mnie zle, ale slucha mi sie tej plyty zbyt lekko, niezobowiazujaco i piosenkowo. jest swietna, ale na maratony sie nie nadaje; osluchasz sie w specyfice i wracasz do Nera lub MMM ; )

[0ms]

mi sie jej wcale nie slucha tak lekko. jesli spojrzec tylko i wylacznie na muzyke - w oderwaniu od konceptu - moze i da sie to w ten sposob odebrac, ale ja w ten sposob nie potrafie na nia spojrzec. zdecydowanie najbardziej rowna i spojna muzycznie plyta, hiciarska, ale tez najdojrzalej skomponowana, ze swiadomoscia technicznych, budzetowych i instrumentalnych ograniczen (sam Jerome sie na temat tych ograniczen gdzies wypowiadal), ktore wg mnie niestety wychodza na Nera (w mniejszym stopniu) i kolejnych az do Flowers (w nieco wiekszym). co do ostatniej sie nie wypowiem, bo zwyczajnie nie pamietam jej juz na tyle dobrze. swoja droga, Nera to druga plyta, do ktorej lubie wracac. ma mielizny, ale czuc na niej duzy potencjal.

[Pelson]

Takie sobie.

Tak to widzę słuchając nowego singla. Takie ciepłe piwo w letni upał, niby można, ale nie wchodzi za dobrze. Poczekam bez specjalnych emocji na pełne płyty, może się pozytywnie zaskoczę.

[manieczki]

[grot]

ładne, ładne, ciekawe ile sobie za to cudeńko policzą

[0ms]

nie musze chyba mowic, ze bez certyfikatu autentycznosci i szafki na te wszystkie klamoty nawet nie bede myslal o zakupie?

[grot]

tak, i klęcznik jeszcze musi być ;)

[moonfire]

A może dołączą Vaderowskie certyfikaty autentyczności?

[Havoc]

Jerome na fb:

looks like we'll be hitting poland soon...

[manieczki]

http://www.infrarot.de/rome/die-aesthet ... on/2009595
no to kto bierze?

[Baton]

Dla niecierpliwych "krótka" notka ze strony wytwórni i TRACKLISTA.



ROME – DIE AESTHETIK DER HERRSCHAFTSFREIHEIT

A song cycle in three volumes!

• Triple album in book format and slipcase (151 x 213 x 39mm approx)
• Each CD individually packaged within a hardback book
• Each book bound in a natural fabric covering with the title hot foil blocked and embossed
• Each book has 40 pages, bound as sewn signatures, printed on high quality ‘Arcoprint Elfenbein’ paper, plus endpapers
• Very sturdy slipcase made from 1.5mm board, with an outer covering of natural fabric and with the title hot foil blocked and embossed
• Strictly limited to 999 copies

In no time, ROME have created a highly impressive back catalogue: eight albums and several EPs in just six years. Since the project’s early days, JeROME Reuter has won an ever-increasing fanbase via indescribably moving, dark and melancholy musical landscapes pertaining to ideological as well as historical homelessness. Reuter has always mastered the art of transporting the listener into a unique musical world. ROME’s discography is a collection of complex and inter-woven works. So for example, the stylistically and musically French-dominated NOS CHANTS PERDUS (Trisol 2010) was set in the French underground of the 1950s and 60s whereas its predecessor FLOWERS FROM EXILE (Trisol 2009) was concerned with the Spanish civil war and the freedom fighter’s subsequent exile in France and elsewhere. As Jerome Reuter was researching both of the above-mentioned albums, there repeatedly appeared in his mind’s eye the quivering vision of a greater, underlying truth, an endeavour, an ideal, which was equally inherent in all of these histories, all of these individual biographies unearthed. This quest, during which the essence of an aesthetic gradually emerged, led to Amsterdam, the south of France and Spain, and many other spots in the back yard of history.

The result is a song cycle in three volumes; over 150 minutes spread across three CDs. The cycle is bound together by spoken word parts, breathing the spirit of the works Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Neruda, HM Enzensberger and Gustav Landauer among others. Three albums, three different recordings, each with a different sound. Jerome Reuter retreated to Belgium for a year – which seems fitting considering that the country is currently without government – in order to live and work in a converted farmhouse studio in a secluded environment. International current events – the uprisings in Tunisia and Libya – accompanied the recordings and brought to the whole an acute topical connection and an unexpected but appropriate contemporary historical framework.

Although Reuter by no means set out to portray exact historical facts, the listener nevertheless obtains a concrete historical experience far beyond that of blogs and internet posts. He creates an aesthetic which attempts to get to the bottom of the sensuality and meaningfulness of the struggle for freedom while at the same time avoiding pointing the finger and the contextlessness of art for art’s sake. As is the case with his literary role model Peter Weiss’s trilogy ‘The Aesthetics of Resistance’, to which parallels in content and form are not unintended, the reflection of the relationship between art and politics forms one of the core elements of the trilogy. If art isn’t underpinned by the greater part of an ideal or is based on a utopia (however futile it may be), then it is hollow and could by no means be considered subversive – which is what would be desirable. Without a genuine counterworld, art is only narcissistic folklore and the artist who regards himself to be uninfluenced by current events is merely a designer.

The sumptuous packaging carries with it a whiff of extravagance and wasted grandeur, especially in a time in which MP3s flying around, seemingly free of charge, determine the appreciation of music consumers, and in which the relationship between music and the actual physical sound carrier is rapidly disappearing. But this work of art is no solitary pleasure. It demands to be more than a curiosity for the more sensitive parts of a washed-out bourgeoisie. The form isn’t self-congratulatory, nor are the sentiments trivial or coincidental.


VOLUME 1: AUFBRUCH or A CROSS OF WHEAT

The aesthetic dimension of this first volume is that of immediacy. This is made plain by the choice of the recording techniques used (throughout the entire production, Reuter used only analogue equipment) and the raw and unrelenting sound. It sings the praises of the birth of a revolt, born out of a fascination with action and resistance in itself. It is the pride in self-determination, of resistance, because to resist means giving destiny a form (Camus). However, ROME does not present art which only devotes itself to efficiency: the music remains too experimental, too difficult to decode for that to be the case. “Free man, you will always love the sea” (Baudelaire): as is so often the case with ROME, the poetry of the sea (‘The Merchant Fleet’) crops up again here and there. The liberation and/or libertarian movement was never a coherent movement, because it never wanted to be a matter of demands, but of life (Landauer). Its nature is manifold and contradictory. Its essence is of freedom, therefore it can never be uniform. This finds musical expression on AUFBRUCH in the multifaceted, stylistically-differing arrangements: from haunting sequences reminiscent of audio books, to plaintive ballads and experimental industrial collages – everything is represented here.


VOLUME 2: AUFRUHR or A CROSS OF FIRE

Here, ROME present a stylistic and emotional potpourri where all manner of things are on offer: rousing folk numbers with an almost seditious air, dark romantic ballads as well as intimiste collages. Without ever becoming enslaved to one particular ideological alignment or descending into nihilism, the song cycle portrays the history of the libertarian/revolutionary movement within Europe and at the same time underlines the human importance of such an endeavour. After volume 1 tried to capture the initial spark of a revolt, the strength of an awakening, volume 2 concerns itself with the beauty of the righteous fight and also the constantly impending danger of it becoming perverted.

“We must doubt ourselves. The clarity of our intentions, the profundity of our thoughts, the benevolence of our deeds! We must doubt our own truthfulness! Do lies not already linger in them again?” – Iles Aichinger


VOLUME 3: AUFGABE or A CROSS OF FLOWERS

“Art holds a unity that history does not” – it is not without good reason that this slogan is preposed to the third part of the trilogy. Art should not be confused with reality (Brecht) and thus ROME preserve the necessary critical distance from the subject without sinking into formlessness. At the same time they succeed equally in illustrating the warm-heartedness of their protagonists and demonstrating the unity of art and the struggle for freedom. >From Plato to Nietzsche or Marx, all innovators mistrusted art, even though it is inseparably connected to revolt, because artists also want to create the world anew. AUFGABE formulates the possibility of a higher set of ethics beyond the current economic system; ethics, whose fundamental principles are those of generosity and universal freedom. It is the appeal for the cultivation of life-affirming, moral and life-enhancing, aesthetic values. To turn one’s own life into a work of art, to give yourself to this work: that is the desired stance. As Conrad expressed it: the objective of the artist is to see that justice is done to the invisible universe. This is exactly what Jerome Reuter has done here.

“The way everything is at the moment, I say, for the intellectual and cultured person to haughtily look down upon the social and the socio-political realms is an erroneous approach which is contrary to life. The political and the social are part of the human.” – Thomas Mann.

Tracklisting

Disc 1 "Aufbruch":-
01. The Chronicles of Kronstadt
02. The Angry Brigade
03. The Spanish Drummer
04. To Teach Obedience
05. The Death of Longing
06. Our Holy Rue
07. The Night-Born
08. The Pyre Glade
09. In Cruel Fire
10. A Pact of Blood
11. The Merchant Fleet
12. A Cross of Wheat

Disc 2 "Aufruhr":-
01. The Brute Engine
02. Seeds of Liberation
03. To Each His Storm
04. Sons of Aeeth 05. August Spies
06. To Be Governed
07. Families of Eden
08. Red Years - Black Years
09. Little Rebel Mine
10. The Breaking Part
11. Eagle and Serpent
12. A Cross of Fire

Disc 3 "Aufgabe":-
01. The Conquest of Violence
02. All for Naught
03. You Threw It at Me Like Stones
04. Automation
05. Time and Tide
06. Dawn and the Darkest Hour
07. Years of Abalone
08. Petrograd Waltz
09. Disbandment
10. Ballots and Bullets
11. Appeal to the Slaves
12. A Cross of Flowers

[grot]

ciekawe co z tego wyjdzie. obawiam się tylko że będzie niestety przegadane i za długie.
swoją drogą ciekawe czy keltuz uzna to za płytę roku skoro będzie o libertarianach ;)

[Baton]

obawiam się tylko że będzie niestety przegadane i za długie.

Intuicja mi podpowiada, że z tego materiału (dwie i pól godziny!) będzie się dało wykroić jeden album znakomity, ze dwa bardzo dobre/dobre albo trzy średnie. Acz może się mylę. Słuchalem dzisiaj znowu ostatniego singla i w sumie to jest całkiem dobra rzecz. Niby bez obesranie, ale jednak te dwa numery spokojnie biją koszmarne Nos Chants Perdus na głowę, więc jest tendencja zwyżkowa (teoretycznie).
O ile po NCP moje zajaranie RZYMEM znacząco opadło (a tak od Confessions był to jeden z bardziej mnie jarających projektów wspólczesnych muzycznych), to jednak czekam na trylogię z dużym zainteresowaniem.

[0ms]

dla mnie Rome zawsze bylo bardzo nierowne (poza absolutnie rewelacyjnym Flowers), wiec teraz licze, ze chociaz sluchalna epke bedzie sie dalo z tego wszystkiego poskladac. juz to chyba zreszta pisalem ;)

[Baton]

Może trochę matematyki na dobre trawienie?

B - 7/10
N - 7,5/10
C - 8,5/10
MMM - 8/10
FFE - 9/10
NCP - 5,5/10

[0ms]

ciezka sprawa. sam nie wiem jak te trzy plyty po obiecujacym Nera ocenic. jest tam pare fajnych pomyslow, ale nie wystarczy ich zeby mnie przekonac do zbyt czestego wracania do tych plyt. z ocena Flowers sie zgadzam, a ostatnia jest po prostu slaba

[grot]

to our Polish fans: we haven't heard from the Polish organisers of the scheduled gigs in weeks now and still have no information regarding transportation, accomodation and travel...so we assume the shows won't happen. as no promotion seems to have been made yet, we must assume they lost interest or had some emergency - anyway, seems like it's too late now, anyway. we know this must be a disappointment to you, but we are just as frustrated about this as you are. -ROME
pokoncertowane

[0ms]

zaden zawod. predzej polski standard

[Havoc]

eehhh...

a tak w ogóle, cholernie mi się podoba NCP. Jestem jakiś dziwny? ;)

[Wódz 10]

ciekawe co z tego wyjdzie. obawiam się tylko że będzie niestety przegadane i za długie.
swoją drogą ciekawe czy keltuz uzna to za płytę roku skoro będzie o libertarianach ;)

Jestem dobrej myśli, lubię długie formy. ;)

W sumie zamówiłbym ten cały wypasiony zestaw, ale dochodzi jeszcze wysyłka i cena rośnie. Ciekawe czy jeszcze zejdą z ceny (oczywiście mam świadomość, że już jest podobno wszystko robione po kosztach)...

A może całość wyjdzie osobno? Cholera wie, trzeba wybadać.