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elendmusic

About Me

Founded in 1993 by composers and multi-instrumentalists Iskandar Hasnawi (France) and Renaud Tschirner (Austria), joined by keyboard player, programmer and engineer Sébastien Roland in 1997, ELEND have gathered around them various musicians in the course of their existence: violinist David Kempf (2000-present), the sopranos Eve-Gabrielle Siskind (1994-1995), Nathalie Barbary (1995-2003), Esteri Rémond (2003-present) and Laura Angelmayer (2005-present).
The completion of the Officium Tenebrarum (or Office des Ténèbres, 1993-1998), ELEND's dark and violent trilogy, was followed by a hiatus of several years, where the composers turned to other, non-public musical projects.
ELEND resurfaced with Winds Devouring Men in 2003, the first part of a new sequence of albums. This work saw them take a quieter turn, soft and delicate strings were organically intertwined with exotic tones and harsh metallic textures and sounds inspired by French musique concrète. On their next album, the furious and dark Sunwar the Dead (2004), the composers combined their talent for large and dense orchestration with the most extreme experiments of the musical avant-garde of the XXth century.
Their latest album A World in Their Screams, which completes their Winds Cycle trilogy, was recorded with 30 instrumentalists and vocalists. The new compositions follow the long epic prose poem which also served as the foundation for the previous two parts of the Winds Cycle, combining personal themes with references to ancient Greek authors. Techniques from the musical avant-garde are tied together with a massive use of electronics and experiments with the human voice; microtonality, sonorism and musique concrète are fused with the post-Romantic instrumentation that is still intrinsically linked to ELEND’s musical identity.
Difficulties in producing this unprecedented type of music led to a deferral of the initially scheduled release date. The earliest draft of the album, contemporaneous with Sunwar the Dead, was modified several times: when the recording sessions had to be postponed the album was merged with the work in progress for the abstract and violent ELEND side-project ENSEMBLE ORPHIQUE. Since techniques had to be invented and developed in order to master such an uncommon sound, ELEND’s intensive and unusually long-lasting work on this album fostered a further radicalisation in composition and production: the result surpasses even their legendary album The Umbersun (1998) in terms of oppressive darkness. A World in Their Screams pushes the limits of musical density, suffocating atmospheres and raw violence to a point of no return.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 05/04/2007
Band Website: www.elend-music.org
Band Members: Iskandar Hasnawi, Sébastien Roland, Renaud Tschirner with session musicians and vocalists
Influences: sort of... Krzysztof Penderecki, Giacinto Scelsi, Pierre Henry, Peter Eötvös, Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono, Alfred Schnittke, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler
Sounds Like: nothing else
Record Label: Holy Records, Orphika, Prophecy Productions
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

[2008/10/07] Mershandising + news

MERCHANDISINGFor the first time since the Officium Tenebrarum releases new Elend t-shirts have been manufactured. 2 motifs, limited to 100 copies each, are now available. Please refer to the Orphika...
Posted by on Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:22:00 GMT

[2008/10/06] New reviews (The Umbersun reissue)

Reviews in English: Lords of Metal Kogaionon in French Obskure The French Touch Thrashocore in German: Vampster Metal.de The album was also reviewed in the following magazines: Zero Tole...
Posted by on Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:34:00 GMT

[2008/04/20] The Umbersun available + WEBSHOP online

The LPs and CDs of the remastered edition of "The Umbersun" have just arrived to Orphika/Noevdia's office. You can order them here.Best regards to you all,Elend.
Posted by on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:50:00 GMT

[2008/03/18] The Umbersun re-released as digipak CD and double vinyl LP

THE UMBERSUN RE-RELEASEThe Umbersun / Au tréfonds des ténèbres is officially being reissued as a 10-yearanniversary edition by ORPHIKA, a division of NOEVDIA (ref. orph01). ELEND have secured a w...
Posted by on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:52:00 GMT

[2007/05/01] New songs and pictures added

New songs posted -J'ai touché aux confins de la mort (alternate mix) from "A World in Their Screams" (2007), unreleased alt. mix w/out lead vocals -A Staggering Moon from "Winds Devouring Men" (2003)...
Posted by on Tue, 01 May 2007 03:46:00 GMT