HATHOR

Formed in classical music and ancient member of the french "group of musical research" (GRM), Igor Wakhevitch explored various musical genres but with a constant fascination for opera, visual art and choregraphies. His way of using analog synth and electronic modules enable him to make a name among the great figures of the 70's kosmische-psychedelic gallery. "Hathor" is what I would like to call a "space opera", built around moody/damaged/ massive spaced out synthesizers and eerie, operatic, majestic atmospheres. The album concept is about the "creation", "death" and "resurrection"...consequently a few compositions are punctuated by narratives in french, speaking about old latin religion. The opening track is a gorgeously dark, creepy electronic hymn with deep synth strings, classical choirs and narratives. without transition it directly carries on circular electronic motifs & various combinations of sounds, always terrific and haunting. A lugubrious, powerful organic church like drone sequence progressively appears. A fantastic drone based composition, delivering an atmosphere of pure madness. "Rituel de guerre des esprits de la terre" is a tribal electronic, fantaisist piece with drums and bizarre noises. "Cris pour les sabbats infernaux" is full of incantations, crying, claustrophobic, plaintive voices. "Office de la levée des corps" is a funereal, religious chant, including narratives in latin. "Amenthi" carries on the same cavernous droney chant but features electronic oscillations. Totally unique and attached to the musical personality of Igor Wakhevitch. A marvellous, enigmatic and ritualistic voyage. A masterpiece highly recommended for fans of Art Zoyd, Pierre Henry, Philippe Besombes...

Early electronics sound based dark mystic bombastic opera-like musical album. Some speaking vocals (on French), heavy, almost ritual, organ drones. Plenty of spacey electronic sounds all around.

Unusual combination of classically-rooted music and easy-accessible melodic electronic. Looking at the time of release, I understand that it's a very early electronic opera experimental work, with characteristic sound .

It's interesting music. I can hardly to say I like it, but even after some repetitive listening it had plenty of attraction, saving some secrets deeply under the surface. In whole, quite experimental work, but should be really interesting for early electronic music researchers.

I am not sure how much this album could attract just regular listener, though.

My rating is 3,5, rounded to 4.

'Hathor' (Horus's enclosure - for all you Egyptologists out there), begins off in almost Biblical proportions, like the soundtrack to 'The Ten Commandments' with a massive wall of sound followed by a deafiningly loud and ominous rich baritone voice who sounds like the prophet of doom.

Some highly advanced pro 70's keyboards quickly enter the frame which squirt and drone all over the place, panning from ear to ear creating a cacophonous racket. Incredibly good electronics that sound way in advance of their years.

Famously, Michael Gira of 'Swans' fame proclaimed this and it's accompanying box-set, one of 'the strangest artists I've ever heard'.

Super deep multi choral voices appear on 'Office de la levee du corps' (whatever that means), which sounds like one of the creepier moments in the 'Omen' with some Tangerine Dream 'Alpha Centauri' sound effects thrown in, which really gives me the creeps in its extreme malevolence. It's quite unlike anything else I've heard.

This highly original and downright unsettling album could seriously damage friendship - with either neighbour or spouse. So watch it folks!

Apparently Wakhevitch studied piano under the tutelage of Olivier Messiaen which would explain a lot, because he was a bit mental as well.

It's the little details that add flavour which make this an excellent recording. There's so many twists and turns that are all unexpected, particularly the spoken voice which truly put shivers down my spine and raised my eyebrows in the most unnatural of ways. The only thing that prevents a 5 star here is the fact that it's all over in what seems the blink of an eye in 34 minutes. It feels more like 15! Brilliant!

Hathor is experimental, ritualistic, enigmatic progressive electronic album by electro- avant-gardist Igor Wakhevitch. Compared to Wakhevitch's previous release, this album is much calmer. The music on Hathor is much more about atmosphere than bizarre experimentation with symphonic and krautrock psychedelia touches. These tracks follow in the ambient, drone, and buzz classes of electronic music, but also features dramatic spoken word passages in French, choir singing, disembodied demonic voices, and strong and demanding electronic pulses.

For anyone looking for a less avant-garde introduction to Igor Wakhevitch's music, this is probably the best bet. But this and Docteur Faust make up the essential Wakhevitch. Though I don't enjoy this albums calmness over Docteur Faust's confusing collage of experimental electronic-symphonic sounds, Hathor serves as a much tamer album for relaxing and meditating in an atmosphere of darkness and uncertainty. Highly recommended.

Wakhevitch's 3rd album makes a decisive turn towards progressive electronic territory. Hailing from 1973 it is quite unique, different from Schulze and Tangerine Dream as it emphasis avant-garde composition and theatricality over improvisation and cosmic exploration. It's still quite spacey but in general it rather reminds me of the avant-garde works from Vangelis.

A strong opener 'Hymne' makes for an epic and disconcerting opener for synths and chorus. At the end, French recited 'poetry' make this track quite pedantic and a bit cheesy actually. It's a common problem with all Wakhevitch releases I've heard. Luckily the compositions remain at a high level throughout, exploring new forms as well as sounds. Like many avant works, it makes this the sort of music that I do enjoy very much at an intellectual level but that I find difficult to connect to on an emotional/intuitive level.

Inside the pyramid

This is a strange beast to say the least, and should probably be approached with caution. I mean, it feels like two different albums decided to work together, and out of this rather peculiar meeting came the weird and schizophrenic anomaly: Hathor.

Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of love, music and beauty - and bearing that in mind - projecting images of pyramids, solar devotion, high priests, magic and wonder, - then this album just might work for you, because most people will probably need some kind of help getting through the mystical and slightly avant garde world of Igor Wakhevitch.

This album is two faced like I said earlier, and on one hand you´ve got a hypnotic and trance inducing electronic Zeuhl music, that reminds me of both Art Zoyd´s Berlin and Popol Vuh´s In den Gärten Pharaos. You know that staccato and tribal percussion - building and building, sounding like music should to a 20th century Indian Shaman - accompanied by some spooky frog-like synthwork that jumps rhythmically every now and again. -On the other hand half of this album contains what can only be described as an evil ritualistic mass - done with electronics and various ominous sounding choir voices. These shift from deep bellowing chanting monks to operatic and dramatic sequences as well as spoken word poetry and whispering voices casting long forgotten spells.

Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde you say? Not entirely, but the outer extremes of both these sonic personalities are thankfully interwoven in Wakhevitch´s completely original way of creating atmospheres through electronics. All the pieces are soaked in all kinds of synths and moogs, but you certainly won´t hear a keyboard solo - what he does is more like laying down a foundation of brooding and evocative surfaces - sounding like he´s summoning magic overhead the majestic presence of the Sphinx. At other times he merely adds colour and juice to the tracks through noises and bleeps, which range from underground moog burps to what sounds like electronic frantic grasshoppers, cockroaches and buzzing robotic flies - all weaving about in ecstasy.

I was listening to this during a power cut just an hour ago, and I finally saw the light inside my darkened apartment. The goddess of love didn´t exactly descend from her solar empire, but I did imagine all these wonderful images of an Egyptian death mass from the insides of a holy temple of stone with beautiful brown women wearing gold - moving like serpents, High priestesses with red feline eyes and a large gathering of devotional followers all chanting along with the powerful electronic orchestra banging away to the far right of the enormous altar of Hathor.

Third Igor album in so many years, and this on brings yet another dimension, without straying from his gnarl musical aesthetics. We're still dealing with an electronic-sprinkled classical modern-symphonic canvas, and this time, the French narratives are a lot more present, something roughly useful (yet cheesy and embarrassing, like so many narratives) if you wabnt to make something of the concept album this is. As the album's title suggest, we're dealing with a pre-Roman and pre-christian sects and their related religious mythology, and the afterlife. Roughly, we're dealing with the Egyptian death cults and whatever Satanist bull[&*!#] that ensued in the last two centuries: read, watch and listen to the Lucifer Rising project with Jimmy Page, Bobby Beausoleil and Alistair Crowe links, for another similar example (with some incredibly excellent music. Anyway, this third Hathor album present a bland and blanc artwork, got released Atlantic, but did not feature the Triangle pop group, as its predecessors did. Instead, we find organist Estellet-Brun, Guy Boyer, the Ensemble Polyphonique (this album is much more vocal and lyrical than its predecessors) and the pop group Pachacamac.

In some ways, Hathor is Igor's gloomiest album ever, often sinister, but not really scary: actually if you're an atheist, this is pretty laughable. You could imagine a clown-ier or kitschy Shub-Niggurath (for those who know them), but the quality of the music and soundscapes avoid ridicule or pastiche. The nearly-symphonic electronic soundscapes opening the album could have you think of Tangerine Schulze intro with aerial choirs, but soon enough the 'grandiose' narratives pull you in the satan-derived concept, before diving us in the sea of oscillating and pulsing electronic sounds and hypnotizing rhythms of Grand Sabbath and Rituel De Guerre. A bit later, the crowd-rising harangues and the Latin mass incantations are downright silly, and will most-likely make you reach for that ffwd button on your remote control, past the first few listens. Once the music returns, we still have to deal with dronal choirs, but the sinister farce has stopped, to leave a haunting soundscape of Amenthi, but it overstays its welcome. Howling owls greet you in the night-ending dawn (Aurora), with some soothing liturgical organ.

A thankfully fairly-short album Hathor might have gained somewhat from being a wordless concept and maybe gain a few more instrumental passages. Indeed past these doubtful conceptual meanderings, we're left with a very groundbreaking electronic soundscape album that can only impress the historically-conscious music-heads. Too bad this would- be masterpiece of an album is littered with esoteric junk, though.

Delving into the world of the mystical and occult on his third album HATHOR, IGOR WAKHÉVITCH dropped much of the modern classical instrumentation found on his first two releases and focused more on a dark, spooky mix of keyboards, synthesizers and looping techniques along with a larger swath of percussive embellishments. The other major emphasis was on vocal performances which included not only poetic narrations reminiscent of Ruth White's electronic poetry on "Flowers Of Evil" but also employed a collaboration with the Paris Opera choir which took the vocal experimentation to a whole new level. A seamless flow of seven tracks, HATHOR refers to an Egyptian goddess but the Hebrew character on the album cover clearly makes references to the mystical traditions of the Kabbalah. In effect, the album is a rather pan-mystical experience that can make you feel like you're having an out of body experience.

HATHOR evokes a 34 minute occult ritual soundtrack that takes you on the darkest abstruse journey through sound that you could possibly imagine. The full title hosts the appellative subtitle LITURGIE DU SOUFFLE POUR LA RESURRECTION DES MORTS which translates from the French language as "Liturgy Of The Breath For The Resurrection Of The Dead," so just from the title alone you can surmise that this will be one electrifying ride! Having recently collaborated with Terry Riley earlier in 1973 on his "Happy Ending" soundtrack, WAKHÉVITCH picked up some tricks from Riley and married them with his own avant-garde sensibilities that resulted in an odd mix of early Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Mort Garson (especially as Lucifer on "Black Mass") and even a bit of early Cluster in tandem with some of the most uncanny avant-garde vocal performances and high-spirited percussive sequences.

Permeated throughout with a magical and ritualistic ethos, HATHOR segues the tracks together perfectly as one morphs into the next without failing to sever the connection to the overall liturgical ambient intent. Percussive heavy motifs accompanied by eccentric keyboard exhibitions give way to vocal outbursts that range from narrations (en français) to shouted out tirades and operatic choirs delivering a more traditional requiem. The most bizarre and alienating track is surely the penultimate "Amenthi" which delivers a droning effect for nearly eight minutes accompanied by a monks' choir, oscillating kosmische sound effects and a whole range of freakily manipulated gothic vocal performances that extend from the highest registers to creepy baritone vocalists that sound like they're on the verge of breaking out into some sort of throat singing technique.

The dark, ethereal atmosphere only add an extra layer of horrific dirge-like ambience to the mix as fluttering spacey sound effects randomly emerge and then sputter out of range. In fact, the strangest moments with the vocal performances and eerie synthesized backdrops make me believe that surely Philip Glass must have heard this album to inspire his stylistic approach on "Glass Works" and the "Koyaanisqatsi" soundtrack. Even the track titles are creepy! Lengthy French headings like "Rituel De Guerre Des Espirits De La Terre" (Ritual Of Spiritual War Of The Earth" only evoke a great metaphysical cataclysm that remains utterly imperceptible to the five senses. The soundtrack to another realm just beyond our dimensional perception that we are allowed in this 3D construct. This album is put together so perfectly that it's impossible to distinguish where one track ends and the other begins.

A true oddball creation even within the already bizarre world of WAKHÉVITCH's eccentric palette, HATHOR is the scariest and even most mystical musical experience i have yet come across with a seamless delivery that wends and winds its way through the fabric of some imperceptible reality that lies outside our ability to detect. Like a prolonged meandering peregrination into the darkest recesses of occult ritualistic practices, listening to HATHOR for the first time is like a experiencing a happenstance discovery of the occult ceremony of some secret society and the awe of encountering something completely alienating in relation to our every day world. Musically unclassifiable, WAKHÉVITCH produced the perfect musical chimera that fused classical, progressive electronic, choral, tribal percussive and horror synth into one monstrous mystical masterpiece. Utterly brilliant from beginning to end.