Organ Eye

eponymous
david maranha, jasmine guffond, patrícia machás e torben tilly
CD/LP, 2007 ed. Staubgold 74 (Germany)

http://www.myspace.com/organeye


Recorded & produced in Lisbon during 2005.
Mastered at Calyx, Berlin 2006

Organ Eye is a supergroup of sorts. Not in a “let´s take the drummer of Yes and team him up with the first keyboarder of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and the singer of Foreigner” kind of way, but because it brings two of today´s more interesting drone bands together. Organ Eye consists of Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly of Australia´s Minit and David Maranha and Patricia Machas of Osso Exotíco from Portugal. Their self-titled debut album features two lengthy tracks that are perfectly designed for the also available LP format, each clocking in at just over 20 minutes.

The first tune builds up really slowly. In the beginning the electronic elements prevail. I felt strongly reminded of the recording of a live set from Kendrick McDowell, Christopher Willits and Dan Ambrams from 2001. Clicks and electronically generated hiss form the backbone of the mighty drone lingering in the background and just waiting to be unleashed. In the end, Organ Eye still keep the bottleneck tight, so that the drone can only creep out bit by bit. The result is more ambient than noisy, but certainly not boring at all and well worth listening through its entire 24 minutes. The second track shows some abrasive moments right in its beginning. All the while, it takes a few minutes until you see more clearly in which direction Organ Eye are facing. “Tema #2“ is a big pleasure to listen to. The promo sheet speaks of references to LaMonte Young, Terry Riley and Tony Conrad and on here, those references are hard to overhear. In a classic psychedelic minimalist mode, an organ is played over electronic drones, which take over towards the end of the tune.

While it sometimes seems as if Organ Eye are holding something back, their debut is still drone music at its finest and shows all the elements of a transcendent and meditative exercise. It never sounds like any of the players doesn´t fit in at any certain moment. And in that way, Organ Eye don´t sound like members of two separate groups, but like one entity.
Stephan Bauer (17 April, 2007)
Foxy Digitalis

It’s tempting to view Organ Eye as an electronic-acoustic drone summit. The quartet comprises David Maranha and Patricia Machás of Osso Exótico, a long-lived Portuguese outfit with minimalist tendencies and a fondness for organs and acoustic strings, and New Zealand-born world travelers Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly of Minit, who quite sensibly confine their instrumentation to easily packed electronic gear.

But the production of their collective sound is less important than its arrangement and manipulation. The album features two tracks whose duration in the lower 20s suggests that someone in Organ Eye fondly remembers the LP; there is, in fact, a small vinyl pressing of this record available to those who are well connected and fast acting. Each progresses slowly, and if regarded from a distance seems as blank and unyielding as the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Close listening reveals a different story; this music actually teams with detail, it’s apparent solidity the result of glare thrown off by agitated activity. But the detail comes on slowly, accumulating density like a swiffer plowing across some cat lady’s long-unswept wooden floor. “Tema #1” opens serenely enough, with tiny consonant tones stitched around a swell of bowed piano strings. But then some looped clatter — a cassette deck kicking into action, perhaps? — pokes out of the dronescape and the music banks left and up, ascending towards a big beam of feedback.

On “Tema #2,” the sounds really begin to dance. Overdriven organ and harmonium wheeze in and out of phase with each other like a couple early Terry Riley recordings, around which layers of pixilated sonic glitter flicker like an aura around some celestial body. Like a long look at the sun, the longer you squint, the less clear it all becomes.
By Bill Meyer
Dusted

The term “drone” has really become passé. Now linked to the likes of metal artisans such as Sunn O))) and Earth, it is now almost synonymous with massive sustained guitar riffs and overly processed vocals. Organ Eye, a four-person improvisation group featuring members of Portugal’s Osso Exotico and New Zealand’s Minit are also in the business of doing drone, but more in the classic sense. You won’t find any Sunn amps or smashed guitars here, but you will find classic Spacemen 3 guitar feedback drones and Velvet Underground inspired violin work.

The band cites the aforementioned VU's "Sister Ray" (17 of the greatest minutes in rock history), Buddhism, and Albert Ayler as some of their major influences, and it’s pretty transparent in their work. It’s drone more in the sense of dwelling in feedback and exploring the nuances of the tape loop as an instrument. The two massive tracks are based on live improvisations, and like the giants of free jazz, the players reflect off each other and create something that sounds like it was carefully planned and choreographed long before any gear was turned on.

"Tema #1" opens like the Spacemen 3 cats, all loops of guitar feedback and odd percussive found sounds here and there. The wall of feedback continues to build throughout the entire work, never really getting into the realms of harsh noise or the like, but does become progressively dissonant as the track wears on. Later, John Cale is channeled through David Maranha's violin work, reminscent of some old record with a banana on the cover. The piece finally ends with gentle electronics slowly fading away.

Where "Tema #1" opened with the organic feel of six strings resonating, "Tema #2" takes the bionic approach and begins with grating high pitched tones, like a telephone call on a busy signal slowly being shredded by a blender. Scrapes and other odd percussive textures are promenant as well, until the electronics build more and more through the first half, to the point that listening becomes difficult (in the “ow my ears are starting to ring” sense) before dropping a few notes in the scale and settling in at a more mid range set of electronic loops and harmonium drone. At the end it creeps up to tinnitus level once again before ending abruptly.

Being that this is drone based (in the La Monte Young sense, not in the black metallist sipping a chai latte sense), it can’t really be deemed “easy” listening. However, the players seem to be a natural fit with each other, and have made an improvisation that just feels natural, and right and leads to a very compelling debut work.
Written by Creaig Dunton 23 April 2007
Brainwashed

Say what you will about the New Zealand-via-Australia duo of Minit, at least they're smart enough to do everything slowly. It took them a several years to follow their debut album, Music, with 2006's Now Right Here; the relatively swift appearance of Organ Eye on its heels is one of 2007's more welcome surprises, all the better for being a new quartet with David Maranha and Patricia Machás of Osso Exótico, Portugal's premiere slow-moving, rarefied drone outfit. Organ Eye wraps the quartet in the cloaking veil of blurred, shape-shifting dronology prevalent among many artists working within their field, but there's something about these performances – perhaps the intimation of chance that comes from their live improvised settings – that transcends the rote-ness of so many of their peers. And while the drone is an underlying structure for "TEMA #1", Minit's oscillating electronics scratch livid patterns in the sidelines, scraping away like bolts of light underneath your eyelids, or etched bursts of denuded filmstock in the hand-crafted films of Stan Brakhage. The quartet work in loosely episodic fashion: "TEMA #1" moves from tentative beginnings to an engorged rush of fizzling noise at about the fourteen minute mark, which recedes into insectile near-silence. This may imply a tension-release structure that's not exactly under-represented in the field of modern improvised electronics, but Organ Eye's attention to texture becomes the scaffold upon which their improvisations build. Or, in the case of "TEMA #2", it becomes the uncarved block around which all manner of rangy, hissing noises skirl. This is a staggeringly confident recording that transcends the genre through its attention to the genre's detail.
Jon Dale
May 2007
Paris Transatlantic Magazine


As guiding hand behind Portugal’s Osso Exótico, David Maranha has long bowed his way towards the heart of “eternal music.” Drawing inspiration from the ’60s experiments that eventually birthed the Velvet Underground, Maranha enlists long-time collaborator Patricia Machás, as well as like-minded New Zealanders Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly, to explore two long, detail-rich drone excursions. While earlier recordings, such as the excellent 2000 release Circunscrita on Namskeio records, delved exclusively into the dense properties of acoustic instruments, Organ Eye open the door to the electronics provided by the NZ invitees. The results are phenomenal. On “Tema #1,” Maranha and Machás’ slowly breathe through their Hammond airways, adding little pockets of violin, drums and bowed piano as time passes. The electronics are so gradual, transparent and integrated that they never really reveal themselves until the piece concludes. “Tema #2,” however, picks up at that spot, with the modem squelch of digital noise transmitting its signal into both the past and future. Building these pieces through improvisation, the players are skilled listeners, preferring to cooperate on completely filling the cavity of listening gracefully rather than overwhelming with over-amplification and feedback.
By Eric Hill
September 2007
Exclaim!

Born out of creative empathy and chance, Organ Eye were formed out of a live triple-bill comprised of David Maranha, Minit and the Staubgold Sound System, that played at the ZDB Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, at the end of February 2005. With the addition of Patrícia Machás, a member of Osso Exótico alongside Maranha, the quartet that now forms Organ Eye was completed. The recording of this eponymous debut album then took place in March and December of 2006. A cumulative effort in several senses, Organ Eye assembles some of Maranha's and Machás's work in Osso Exótico exploring hypnotic, repetitive & ritualistic properties found in the use of several acoustic and electrical devices. Minit's previous output, as can be observed in their 2003 Staubgold release «Now Right Here», is a mind-expanding/soul-mellowing exercise of drone music, processed and designed via digital media. The intersection and addition to this sum, is the fully-formed patchwork of eternal sound vibration they manage to generate in unison, taking from the seminal teachings of the Young/Conrad/Riley axis, and deconstructing the spiritual trip as to be able to reposess it and make it their own. Throughout the record's two tracks (both over the 20 minute mark), circular fuzzed out Hammond riffs keep realigning the same fragments as they change throughout the jams, while delicate violin sweeps draw up the soundspace. Digital treatment, processed acoustic sources & a number of precise sonic particles are constantly thrown onto the ululating harmonic lines, until they unlock the grooves, and revelation times occurs. Organ Eye is drone music in modern forms as spiritual alignment in crescendo, like constellations drawing themselves up, finding an opening for the infinite, blasting away, seeing it manifest itself and being a part of it, then walking away from it, simultaneously observing and generating its disintegration. At the end of the day it's beautiful irony that some truly cosmic experience and a secular ritual can be reinvented and still manifest itself with clarity while undergoing scalpelization. The rest is just down to taking it into the outer regions and sharing the trip once again, to reenter the holy channels of ineffable feeling, to forget and relearn, forever.
Pedro Gomes

OK so David Maranha is back. After Osso Exotico's collaboration with Verre Enharmoniques (see Vital Weekly 557), and a re-issue of 'Piano Suspenso', he now pops up as Organ Eye, together with Patracia Machas and Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly, otherwise known as Mimit. In February both Maranha and Mimit played at ZDB in Lisbon and later Machas came along and in between March and December 2006 they made the two pieces that form the self-titled debut album. Maranha plays hammond organ, violin, Guffond electronics, Machas harmonium, bass drum and bowed piano and Tilly electronics. If one is a bit acquainted with both Osso Exotico and Mimit, it would be no surprise that drones play an important role here, but it's quite violent ones. More say Tony Conrad & John Cale than Mirror or Monos. Highly improvised it seems to me, with lots of small strange sounds shivering below the surface: the electro-acoustic component of this music. The meeting of the acoustic instruments by the Portuguese, versus the electro-acoustic, loop based Australians. It's quite a tour de force this one. Loud, but not too much noise, present and clear, rather than lulling the listener into sleep. Very intense music and perhaps for all four involved a break with what they have been doing so far. For me the best of the these three. (FdW)
Frans de Waard
Vital, number 567

As guiding hand behind Portugal’s Osso Exótico David Maranha has long bowed his way towards the heart of Eternal Music. Drawing inspiration from the 60s experiments that eventually birthed Velvet Underground, Maranha enlists longtime collaborator Patricia Machás as well as like-minded New Zealanders Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly to explore two long and detail-rich drone excursions. While earlier recordings, such as excellent 2000 release Circunscrita on Namskeio records, delved exclusively into the dense properties of acoustic instruments, Organ Eye opens the door to the electronics provided by the NZ invitees. The results are phenomenal. On “Tema #1” Maranha and Machás’ slowly breath through their Hammond airways adding little pockets of violin, drum and bowed piano as time passes. The electronics here are so gradual, transparent and integrated they never really reveal themselves until the piece concludes. “Tema #2” however picks up at that spot with the modem squelch of digital noise transmitting its signal into both past and future. Building these pieces through improvisation, the players are skilled listeners, preferring to cooperate on completely filling the cavity of listening gracefully rather than overwhelming with over-amplification and feedback.
Eric Hill
SURGERY

Born in 2005 from the people involved with Osso Exótico and Minit because of a live concert, Organ Eye found their definitive organic with the successive help of Patricia Machás (also a member of Osso Exótico). Their first homonymous album contains two long untitled experimental suites which seem composed in trance. This "brain music" ideally link the experimental field with Krautrock thanks to the lysergic approach to sounds. The suites form an unique mutating work of the length of 45 minutes which like a snake who changes his skin, slowly crawls between the sounds. On the background the organ loops create a sort of liquid background while casual beaten objects duet with feedbacks. The tension and the noise level increase and when the organ become the main sound it seems agonizing, spreading its sound like blood. The second suite is based on the same approach but the sounds change a little (there are more bass sounds and the organ remember me the 70's improvisations). I appreciated the attitude but I wasn't that much on the same frequency...
30 April 2007
Maurizio Pustianaz
Chain D.L.K.

Organ Eye is a momentary collaboration between Portugal’s Osso Exótico and Minit of New Zealand. The quartet of experimental musicians here present a Spartan document of two tracks totalling 46 minutes, improvised, indebted to early minimalism and its binocular gaze toward medieval drone and eastern raga. The first segment, “Tema #1”, opens on sharp, electro-acoustic drones, and the timely arrival of snippets of organic sampling, meted-out into loose beats. However, shying away from the blip-blop of To Rococo Rot, Ui, or any number of Staubgold sympathizers, Organ Eye restricts its focus to the colour and texture of a handful of tones, with each of the four band-members inhabiting a place in the ear where they carefully vibrate a strand. The acidity of the central drone recalls the restless sustain of La Monte Young in Growing’s ‘The Sky’s Run Into The Sea’, evoking the same natural harmonics, coupling these with a swarming of noise like fired synapses suggesting the pantheism of life in micro and macro. Succeeding the entropy of the first, “Tema #2” appears more focused, layering bolts of high-end drone atop one another with an almost algebraic rhythm, noise ornaments and a Terry Riley organ drone issuing forth over bass-drum punctuations; as if magnetized, the lingering elements realign to give the panther robot definition as a Krautrock wall of sound. Ecstatic, complete exhilaration. Jewel-cased, with cool metallic-ink design.
17 Apr 07
Animal Psi

Organ Eye's Self titled debut servers up two long form satisfying and detailed drone based pieces from this Australia/ New Zealand four piece.
They Utilizes a mix of electronics, hammond organ, violin, processed harmonium, minimal percussion and guitar elements to create their richly detailed and growing sound worlds. Tema # 1 is the first track, It's starts off with grey first morning light drones that are met by circling string harmonics. the picec slow grows and develops with One of the most rewarding elements been this wonderful repeated sound that brings to mind the slow pumping of aged hospital ventilation system. The picec builds to wonderful powerful end with eerier marching bass drum behind the shifting yet dronig sound elements. Tema # 2 is the second track and starts up in a more hectic and busy feel, with layers of different instrumentals drone/stuck patterns over laying and scuttling around eachs. As the track develops the hectic-ness seems to grow in volume and depth. There’s also a nice throbbing bass line added in too, that really builds to quite a rocking and beautiful hectic crescendo, before like the first track finishing off with the eerier and atmospheric bass drum elements.
An original, atmospheric and dense take on drone music, which really rewards repeated listening as new sound details and textural elements seem to come to the surface.
Roger Batty
Musique Machine

Da membri di Osso Exòtico (David Maranha e Patrìcha Machàs) e Minit (Jasmine Guffond e Torbert Tilly), ecco due improvvisazioni di circa venti minuti ciascuna tra organo hammond, violino, harmonium, piano ed elettronica, dove è certo quest'ultimo elemento, visti anche i pesanti trattamenti riservati agli altri strumenti, ad emergere. Free jazz forse, nell'attitudine più che nella forma che poi assumono i suoni, che fanno pensare al Jim O'Rourke di "I'm Happy and I'm singing..." e anche al Fennez più estremo. Come in loro, anche qui però la componente melodica, emotiva, sentimentale addirittura, emerge e si fa sentire. Nessun tecnicismo fine a sé stesso, nessuna autoindulgenza: ogni singolo suono è sparato fuori con carica emotiva e pathos degno dell'opera. Un primo brano più sommesso, ed un secondo più lirico e denso accompagnano per quarantaquattro intensissimi minuti giocati sugli intrecci di frequenze medie ed alte, con qualche diradato profondissimo basso a fare talvolta capolino. Il flusso è ininterrotto, densissimo, continuo e teso, ma mai estenuante, ovviamente per chi è abituato a questo genere di musica sperimentale. Ma per chi invece in questo ambito è stufo di sperimentalismi sterili che lasciano quasi del tutto da parte il lato emotivo di questa che è pur sempre musica, Organ Eye è un disco da avere a tutti i costi.
Matteo Uggeri
sands-zine

La sigla è nuova ma la musica e i personaggi no. Gli Organ Eye nascono infatti dalla fusione di due delle più interessanti drone bands in circolazione: i portoghesi Osso Exòtico (David Maranha e Patricia Machas) e gli australiani Minit (Jasmine Guffond e Torben Tilly). L’album di debutto, omonimo, rappresenta la perfetta fusione tra l’approccio dei primi e lo stile dei secondi, tra la plasticità dei portoghesi e la ripetitività degli australiani. Le due tracce di cui si compone il disco, intitolate programmaticamente Tema #1 e Tema #2, riassumono l’estetica di una drone music classica, che lavora in crescendo, passando dal minimalismo della prima parte al rumorismo della seconda.

L’introduzione lentissima e statica che pigramente si sostanzia in un drone. Il crescendo sinistro delle interferenze. Lo sciamare elettronico che, alla maniera dei Growing, si incastra in blocchi di frequenze interrotte. Un habitat di microsuoni mandati in loop e messi in circolo dal suono reiterato di uno psichedelico organo hammond. Il marziale panorama noisy alla Fullerton Whitman, in cui si sfocia nell’ultima parte di Tema #2 prima di annichilirsi nell’apocalittico finale. Per essere drone music, quella degli Organ Eye si mantiene meritoriamente lontana dai classici momenti di noia che affliggono il genere. Un nome da segnarsi per gli estimatori di queste sonorità.
Antonello Comunale
sentireascoltare

Wie ein leises Glimmen schwelen die von Harmonium und Hammond Organ geloopten Morsecodes in der Nacht. Zwei lange Stücke, Tema #1 und #2, beinhaltet das Album Organ Eye um David Maranha (Osso Exotico), Jasmine Gufford, Patricia Machas und Torben Tilly. Die Aufnahmen enstanden live in der ZDB Galerie in Lissabon ende Februar 2005 und wurden im letzten Dezember in Berlin abgeschlossen. Raga-eske Intonierungen werden subtil aufgebaut, verwandeln sich in 22 Minuten zum sphärischen Monument eines statisch geformten Augenblicks. Wie Oren Ambarchi auf seinem bezaubernd melancholischen Album Triste von 2005 oder bei Charlemagne Palestines minimalistisch-reduziertem Werk Strumming Music von 1975 werden die mikrotonalen Zwischentöne bei Organ Eye verlangsamt, geloopt, gedehnt und gleichzeitig in repetitive Pattern umgesetzt, die fast zwingend magnetisieren. Mag sein, dass die elektro-akustische Dronemusik etwas en vogue kommen wird in sagen wir, 160 Jahren, als eigenständiges Genre jedenfalls existiert sie relativ erfolgreich und kontinuierlich seit Young/Conrad/Riley in den späten fünfziger Jahren die minimalistische Komponente der jeweiligen und gemeinsamen indischen Lehrmeister wie Pandit Pran Nath aufregend und inspirierend fanden.
Peter Kaemmerer
Hair Entertainment

Seit geradezu undenkbar langer Zeit sorgt David Maranha dafür, dass Portugal nicht als leerer Fleck auf der Landkarte für experimentelle Musik wahrgenommen wird. In schön regelmäßigen Abständen, mal unter dem Projektnamen Osso Exótico, mal unter eigenem Namen, arbeitet Maranha an der Schnittstelle von Post-Psychedelic, Musique Conrète und Soundscapes lange bevor Psychedelisches eine Renaissance erfahren hat. 1997 war beispielsweise auf dem kleinen französischen Sonoris-Label mit Osso Exótico VI – Church Organ Works eine ungemein intensive CD mit Minimal Music an der Kirchenorgel entstanden, die diesem im Pop-Kontext doch eher selten gehörten Instrument zu einem ganz neuen Image verhalf. Die Orgel, diesmal eine Hammondorgel, steht auch im Mittelpunkt der Aufnahmen zu Organ Eye, ein Name, in dem das Instrument ebenso steckt wir das Organische, mit dem sich diese pulsierenden Aufnahmen assoziieren lassen. Zusammen mit Jasmine Guffond (Electronics) und Torben Tilly (Electronics) von Minit sowie Osso-Exótico-Mitstreiterin Patricia Machás (Harmonium, Bass Drum, Piano) sind hier im Quartett strudelnde Soundscapes aufgenommen worden, die eine geradezu orgiastische Intensität entfalten. Auf zwei langen Nummern laufen die fuzz-verstärkten Orgeln heiß und rekapitulieren noch einmal die musikalischen Visionen eines La Monte Young und Tony Conrad, ohne diesen ›Originalen‹ gegenüber irgendeinen Schritt zurück zu fallen bzw. sie nur wieder neu aufleben zu lassen. Die auf Improvisations-Basis eingespielten Stücke steigern sich langsam, bis der Raum kurz vorm Platzen mit Schwingungen erfüllt ist und die geradezu physische Kraft dieser Klänge ein verwirrendes Gefühl von Freude und stockendem Atem zugleich bereitet. Schönheit hat einen neuen Namen und ist wie immer zu überwältigend, um länger als die hier präsentierten 44 Minuten ertragen zu werden.

Test Card