Alejxis

Alejxis es el nombre musicale de Alexander Sokolov....Info surrounding the Alejxis symphonic percussion project 1995-2008.......... Alejxis founded the ' The Healing Drums of Brixton' during 1976 with Lori Vambe and Michael O'Shea, playing street percussion and festivals in London and the U.K, apppearing in the repeated 1976 BBC programme ' Ethnic Britain '. That was the long hot summer and rain was finally made at the Bath Arts Festival. ...In 77 the Brixton transformed into 'Presence' with Alejxis and Lori before running underground after Virgin Records declined to release the Presence recordings in 1980, saying 'Wouldn't you add vocals?' and 'How about trying us again in 10 years!'. Lori and O'Shea, may he rest in peace, thereafter diverted theirselves into string percussion investigations and Alejxis continued skin percussion research. In those days there were no skin drums around. In London only the royal Ghanaian Sidi's Drum Factory produced Marimbas and Mbiras, and kept the West African highlife pre-afrobeat jive alight. Lori and Alejxis always followed the central Highland Pulse based drumming ideals. Lori as the descendant of chiefs particularly held to a strong belief in the dignity of any communication through the drum, and wisely refused to kow-tow to any even slightest compromise with the pre- World Music scene, an attitude that Alejxis had to absorb...................................................... ..............However Alejxis believed the communication had to be found, and so began carving the necessary drums from solid timber around 1978, going thru the whole gamut of tuning: Kenya twisted skin straps, Conga type steel bolt tuning, even Taiko nailing, and then finally formulated the idea of the pneumatic percussion for a recording orchestra in 1987, and, by 1995 was ready for recordings of such a total skin-drum orchestra. Having only been used by Alejxis for his self-expression, the instrument is under copyright................ The design use of heavy rawhide ( Black Angus) needed extreme pitch control, and the sounds here represent the spirit of Alejxis achieved through his 3-dimensional artistic sensibility.................................. The orchestral group of instruments were recorded into some 60 compositions in 1995 and though an abbreviated demo was professionally produced and sent to Real World- there was no finance for the Orchestra to tour. What you hear now is the result of long further sound engineering research by Alejxis himself, required for his personal perfectionist digital unlocking of the true timbres within the dums. Drums are notoriously difficult to record and Alejxis has had to invent his own unique mixing parametres to demonstrate the full breadth of these percussive recordings........................ ............................................................ ............ Back in 1995 however the digital means did not exist and Alejxis was forced then to return underground again and to live by continuing his concentration on visual arts, as a travelling sculptor- once even publicly banned for the raw energy of his work. ............................................................ ..................................Alejxis thinks maybe the world is now ready for these timbre song waves, though simpler drums built by Alejxis were played to Nelson Mandela at the original London Mandela Concert.................................... Alejxis is most interested in making the thick skins sing in chordal symphonic alto above related trebles and huge bass hence the name Alejxis Percussion Symph(onias). All the drums, even the smallest within Bongo dimenions possessed thick skin as the thickness conditions the timbre of the sound. The metallic timbre of thin hide , such as gazelle or goat or calf was rigorously avoided/........................... In the tracks here there are 45 drums: there's a Bass section of 8 giga-Congas from 30 inches downwards played with wool wrapped lead weighted sticks, a chromatic set of 8 softwood kettles for soft sticks, a set of 10 hand-played afro-Congas bridgeing the top end of the Bass all the way up through to long bodied Bongo sized alto/soprano-Congas, a foursome of Bata drums and of heavy djembes, and, a section of short bodied stick drums........................The chromatic congas and closed Kettles are played in chord type unisons, which is what gives the background trebles and the foreground singing and sometimes shrieking Conga notes....................................................... ................ The manner of playing is entirely un-latin or of african drumming: where these utilise doubled strokes within a single drum, Alejxis plays synchronised hand-beat/sticks on multiple pairs of drums tuned to chords , thirds and fifths...................................................... .........Following the recordings, made in a special Drum House in Ireland, the orchestral tuning method was removed and the simpler drums were used for a Lesotho Childrens Teaching Theatre, then in Irish Prison Rehab....................................... Alejxis may get the time to rescuscitate this or another Orchestra as a number 2 orchestra, but the 1987 Copyright on the instrument will remain as any Copyright by convention cannot be either renounced or sold, only licensed. Alejxis may license 48 orchestras but will not nor ever has sold a drum. ............................................................ ......................................These sounds here began with a knife, an axe, a sledgehammer, full-drift or long heavy iron bar, chainsaws, ropes and 'mucho sudor' -a lot of sweat. ................................................... ........................................................As to chiselling out a drum, a tip: that the cup or gouge chisel, and a big one at that, apart from needing a shaft that is very very long, needs either the making or finding of a gouge that is bevelled the opposite to normal chisels. That way it will always seek to travel back into the interior of the drum, rather than cutting through the shell towards the outside..................................................... ............................................................ Congas already -by their shape- produce an echo. Put your fingers in an upturned conga and click them, and you'll hear the echo. The sculptural shape of the conga determines its sound, as shape does for all other drums. The closed kettle, where the soundwave cannot escape, will, like a double ended taiko, bounce the skin back outwards. A taiko barrel will bounce that much more than a tapering kettle. A kettle produces a shorter and higher note than it's opened and bowed equivalent. It varies with djembes, or straight 'rocket' type drums but the echo from a hardwood conga is that much more 'cutting' and brutal than with a softwood conga. And, those classic closed tapering african drums, the ones with twisted strips holding the two skins decoratively over the shell, are, like the larger Ugandan versions (which are more bulbous) all made of extremely soft wood. So much so that sticks can quickly dent and damage the edges. ............................................................ ........................................................... The issue of timber is cardinal. Djembes -apart from those made because of its natural shape from the 'pita' or agave, are carved out of semi-hardwood, and so join in this conga issue. Congas you can take as latinized totally- the aim is fierce echo, to get crispest almost metallic timbre, such that plastic and metal shells are used. The more latin desired - the more they are played 'closed' by being placed 'closed' upon the ground, thus raising the pitch. The sounds are instantly recognisable, and, as with all hand drums, become a danger to live bandsets- their timbre interfering so much with other instruments, yet the metallicised latin congas are includable where african softwood drums are less so. Djembes played at the high notes also function well, which is why the west- african music depends on them so much........................................................ .......................................................... However, djembes, are, like Irish 'bodhrans', possessive of a super-rolling bass characteristic, and this part of them can be tough to control in a recording. As to congas- did a Stradivarius violin get made from a hardwood? No. The timbre is better, if timbre is the aim rather than crisp attack, in the softest timber. In the northern climates that means spruce, in africa it can be what can be called bamboo, that is those pithy pseudo palms, which are soft like a bark rather than a timber...................................................... .................................................... '........................................................... ........................................................ For people who love drums, there are stories, like the Nigerian drum you could hear for 200 clicks, made like a huge 'cow' shape. Or as in prehistoric europe, dig a pit next to a bendable tree..stake a full skin over it with a short fat stick underneath it that's attached to heavy skin rope that exits the skin centrally by a central small cut, then get a crowd to bend the tree down and attach the rope, free the tree and ...Boom,you have a giant tuned 'earth-drum' to play to the very heavens, a massive version of an adungu...................................................... ............................................Mickey Harte did all that politics stuff, meaning, he told us the way the matrilineal age was supersceded by the aryan horse fighters, and, didn't he get as far as showing that it's all gone full circle, how africa that never lost the vibe, by ironical way of slavery then re-exported the lost vibes back even into old europe, thu america : it's like all things, the opposite always is dragged along by what you thought was the 'cool' solution. That slavery, Mickey showed, led to the freeing of a several millenias whole lost influence................................................... ....................................... It's the same with the WWII, those who wanted the war thought it would be against russian commies, and send us all back to 'order' and 'class based' and 'property based' society, 'stop the rot of godless revolution'.........- and -........... what happens, women have to go out to work, and thus are freed, all society gets 'modernised' and.......... we had to invent computers that are now empowering everyone as never wished for by those who pushed for that 'regression'.....[Note The Breaking Heart, actually, was recorded in 1995, and it remembers lost love then, and also the historical loss of the 3rd Imperial Ethiopian Army, by General Ras Makonnen, uncle of Haile Selassie, who like a fool, took the 100,000 men down onto the plain, where Mussolini's fascist Airforce strafed them and dropped Mustard Gas on them. This was the loss of Abyssinia in 1936 and , with the Spanish Civil war, precursor to the general fascist WWII.]..........A voir comme ca va te toucher ce que je vais charger a ma page la, ca s'appelle 'Slow Kisses Our Devil'. Je l'ai faisait les plusieres jours quand les Flics cherchaient a Kh. Kh., le premier terroriste en France, qui a mit une bombe dans le Metro. Puis il s'echappe vers Lyons, mais la on lui a trouve dans une cabine de Telefone, et voila- il etait fusille pour 3 cotes! Apres ca, ils ont decide que la suicide c'etait : la meme affaire, tu vois.... Alors le son c'est le son de la culpabilite de tuer ces innocents/ et ses pensees de justification pour tuer 'que parisiens' , et sur l'autre cote, les marches lentes mais aussi sauvage enver de lui trouver. Bien sur, nous portons tous un petit peu de culpabilite, du Diable, des doutes...et avec cela on marche un peu lentement des fois...et c'st une danse de la vie qu'on suit toujours, .................................................. Alejxis impone una nueva forma de percusion orchestrale hasta ahora desconocido por el mundo. El artista aqui presenta percusion acustico con tonos y ritmos casi increibles para que la gente entran en una nueva etapa de experiencia. El artista demuestra con su fuerza natural un amor por el futuro de cada persona quien espera entrar en eso mundo renovelado. New Age orchestral trance-dance percussion project. See Alejxis Bass for tech history of the project...............................................Artist a de grabacion independiente sin representar, Alejxis va en busca de colocar un sonido percusivo 'emocional' con una fuerza autocompleta (sin otros instrumentos). Empeze fundador con el grupo 'Tambores Brujos de Brixton' (un barrio inmigrante de Londres) en 1976 con un irlandes y un africano, que tocaron en calle y festival por Inglaterra, saliendo en el BBC por un programa 'Reino Unido Ethnico' varias veces....................................................... ..........................................En El ano siguiente Los Brujos se conviertaron en ser 'La Presencia', haciendo grabaciones de percusion, pero el equipo se fundo despues del rechazo comercial del nascente Discos Virgin, quien pidieron anadicion de chorales, y sugerio una vuelta hacia ellos 10 anyos adelante.................................................... ............................................Asi El grupo se fracturo con los dos demas aislando su interes por la musica posible por instrumentacion de cuerdas, dejando el Alejxis solo en buscar a la musica puramente percusiva. En esa epoca Londres no tenia movi'a de tambores salvo con la 'Fabrica de Tambores' djembe y marimba de un duque de Ghana, El Sidi, pero 'La Presencia' fijaban en el sonido de 'trancia' pulsivo mas centro africano , algo aparte de los ritmos de africa del oeste ya entrando al mundo del norte....................................................... ....................................... Alejxis seguia solo en intentar superar las necesidades de instrumentos, pasando desde entonces dentro de todo tipo y manera para construir y atunar tambores, hasta que en 1987 se soluciono como resolver su pista hacia el sonido exacto...................................................... ........................................Alejxis Mientras se traslo hacia el frente sur de Europa, por Almeira, para seguir su otro pasion, bajo el nombre Alexander Sokolov, por esculpir la piedra, una actividad bastante percusivo................................................... ............................................. Desde los setenta Alejxis esculpia perenialmente muchas arboles para alocarse la manera de liberar su pasion musical por pura percusion, y con su nueva solucion de 1987 sus estudios continuos en forma troncera le sirvia para dar forma a una orchestra completa en 1995. Los grabaciones ahora forman parte de esa orchestra, que Alejxis preservo en una gran seria de albums hypotheticos antes de dar la orchestra para ensenacion infantil medio de una maestra africana de Lesotho, y para rehabilitacion de los de la carcel. Lo que se oye aqui son 45 tambores, en grupos de 6 congas super bajo tumbadores, 10 congas medios de trebles, de altos, y de sopranos, con otros tambores serrados , o para palos, todos graduados en chromatismo de sonido, y tocados asi en seguida con las posibilidades chromaticos. Asi la manera no tiene nada a ver con ni la percusion africano ni latino pero es lo purissimo sonido del Alejxis. Disfrute!