Since September of 2005, Transpositional Landscapes has been previewing on flat screen panels staged in the elevators at the hyper hip Hotel Gansevoort http://www.hotelgansevoort.com/ in New York City's Chelsea / Meat Packing district. The hotel has been the site of the Scopes art show that runs parallel with the New York Armory Show.
Oracular Laboratory is in the final stages of packaging the DVD release and notice of public presentations will follow, particularly a lecture and screening at the San Francisco Public Library.
We are planning a co-release of the new Apes of God album – Invisible INC.
Richard Pell's exceptional documentary DON'T CALL ME CRAZY ON THE 4th OF JULY about Pittsburgh street protester extraordinaire Robert Lansberry has enjoyed numerous screenings in the U.S. and Europe.
In November 2003 it was part of the Select Media Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago, and subsequently showed at MASS MOCA, the 2004 Kassel Documentary Festival in Kassel, Germany, where Pell was nominated for Best Young Director, the Other Cinema in San Francisco, California, and the 2004 Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Most recently it was presented at the 2005 Ann Arbor Film Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, winning Pell the award for "Best Michigan Filmmaker".
DON'T CALL ME CRAZY ON THE 4th OF JULY is both biography and history, as the film explores Lansberry's collision with the government's Cold War research into techniques of mind control, and his claims of being an unwitting subject of these experiments.
It begins with a central enigma: why would a sporadically homeless man toting a two-sided sandwich board in downtown Pittsburgh be the matter of a 400 page FBI file? In rare interview footage, we hear Lansberry's own vindication of his remarkable saga, leading up to the unlikeliest of all Congressional campaigns. Filling in with supporting commentary are interviews with witnesses and experts from various fields, among them, Gilbert Marhoefer, member of the Apes of God whose spoken word song "Why Can't Lansberry Get His Mail?" is played over the credits.
DON'T CALL ME CRAZY ON THE 4th OF JULY becomes a work of Beckett verite, as we hear Lansberry's unquavering voice over the image of his modest grave in a veteran's cemetery declare "Everything is a lie… EVERYTHING IS A LIE!" Indeed so, for he has snagged his bit of immortality.
Congratulatons to Richard Pell for winning The Michigan Vue Magaine Award Best Filmmaker at the touring Ann Arbor film festival. Check out tour dates here.
The film is available to download at Richard Pell's website here.
We want also to thank DX radio, especially for having us on heavy rotation (15 times day) on its outlets in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia & Turkey.
Because of the ambitious nature of the piece and 24min length of the complete original we are especially gratified how many stations have played the entire piece. These stations include WMFO Boston-Medford, MA; KRCO Salt Lake City, Utah; KMNR Rolla, MO.
Also we would like to thank those commercial FM station that played us, especially WBER in Rochester, NY, KSPI in Oklahoma City, OK,WAPS in Ohio's "Cool Tunes"show, WAVF Charleston, South Carolina, and New York City's #1 Classic Rock Station WAXQ who featured us on their celebrated "Out of the Box" program. Also thanks to WMNF in Tampa Fla., and WAWL in Chattanooga, Tenn. CFRC Kingston, Ontario, and as always KCIE Jicarilla Apache Tribal radio in Dulce, New Mexico.
The TRANSPOSITIONAL LANDSCAPES DVD is nearing completion. Filming took place in the wilds of Alaska, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Virginia, & California. Written and directed by Gilbert Marhoefer, shot by cinematographer Frazer Bradshaw, and edited by Robbie Proctor, it will be a spectacular visual counterpart to the original work, which will serve as a soundtrack. The DVD will contain a surround sound mix done by Kent Sparling at Skywalker Ranch, Marin Co. CA.
Nearing release time we will be updating this page with information about radio interviews and events surrounding the DVD release.
Progress continues on the next album of Apes of God songs, similar to EDGE OF ARRIVAL: its working title is INVISIBLE INC/K. Also in development an album of a capella choral tunes called PSYCHIC BUTTERFLIES, and an enormous mock epic poem YANQUIS LIBRES about Central America in the 80's and the end of the cold war.
Of special note, artist and filmmaker Richard Pell expects to be finishing a video project about the life and times of the great Pittsburgh street protester Robert Roy Lansberry. Gilbert Marhoefer of the Apes of God may appear in the film, and the Lansberry song from EDGE OF ARRIVAL figures at least in part. The working title of this video is DON'T EVER CALL ME CRAZY ON THE FOURTH OF JULY: WHY LANSBERRY CAN¸T GET HIS MAIL.
Pell has unique interview footage of the man
himself, his trial transcripts and the secret FBI files on him. Its seem
there was more to the story than meets the eye about the man who wouldn't
take no for an answer (" The absence
of anything is also zero" -AOG). Lansberry emerges from the persistent
thirty year protest
as a spirtual crusader on a par with St. Simon Stylites of Syria who in the
fifth century AD
planted himself on a twenty foot stone pillar for a decade, before moving
onto a thirty foot
pillar for the next consecutive twenty years.
TRANSPOSITIONAL LANDSCAPES, a 24 minute composition by the Apes of God, will be released in November 2001in CD format and early in 2002 on DVD which will include a 5.1 surround sound mix with a full-length music video. The CD will consist of two discs, a BLUE and a RED version, which are slightly different mixes of the same piece. Both discs include an identical five-minute single mix.
TRANSPOSITIONAL LANDSCAPES features ELISA SALISIN as solo vocalist reciting a kaleidoscopic nature poem over a sound loop that is elaborated by keyboards, bassoons, flutes and clarinets. Every line presents a different image in a structural pattern that resists completion and seems endlessly generative. For its force and scale, it is spoken word music raised to the near symphonic level.
Pheremones are in the air ... and San Francisco's nationally known spoken word/music group the Apes of God have a new CD release, How To Pick Up Girls!. The bemused recital consists of twenty-six pick-up lines (fifty-two in total) from a 1970's book The Hundred Best Opening Lines, a manual for perplexed bachelors by Eric Weber. In the background, a piano solo from an jazz instructional ear-training tape hauntingly meanders up and down various modal and diminished scales to the lonely ticking of a metronome. Synthesizer noises gurgle and glissando deep in the sonic substratum, and are later re-edited into an eleven minute musique concrete sequence called Making Love The Right Way - suggested listening for the date won by the lines once thing settle into the comfort zone.
But what makes this audio aphrodisiac particularly seductive is the co-release of the How To Pick Up Girls project in film. Gilbert Marhoefer, the group's poet-lyricist and lead vocalist, wrote and directed the six minute short film. Frazer Bradshaw, whose short subject Every Day Here recently screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival , served as How To Pick Up Girls' cinematographer, while the sound editing was done by Kent Sparling of Skywalker Sound.
We are pleased to report that on May 29, 2000, the How To Pick Up Girls CD was the tenth most added recording to the CMJ college charts. HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS! is available for purchase at Amazon.com and for download at Emusic.com. For further press information contact erica@oracularlab.com or call us at (415) 546-1130 or 1-800-708-2737.
An installation of the How To Pick Up Girls project with photographic stills from the movie will be on view from June 9, 2000 through August 25, 2000 at the Sightings Gallery at 435 Bryant St., San Francisco, CA 94107, phone (415) 546-1132. This show will comprise the film, Eric Logan's photographs, as well as related material from earlier releases and Oracular Laboratory projects, including three other film and video works.
On Friday, June 9th, 2000, for the opening of the installation the Apes of God chorus and orchestra presented a performance of How To Pick Up Girls.
In the fall 2000 the Apes of God will release TRANSPOSITIONAL LANDSCAPES, a 23 minute spoken word recital featuring the voice of Elisa Salasin on a symphonic scale. Hopefully, we will be able to render the work in DVD surround sound, if the format lives up to our high expectations.
Listen to Real Audio files of "Ape-ocrypha", no-age music of Jason Gibbs and Steve Knopoff (a sometime Apes collaborator) as well as electronic and bassoon-based airs by Jason at the Oracular Laboratory audio page.
We are pleased to report the Apes of God's EDGE OF ARRIVAL has been played on nearly 300 radio stations across the United States and Canada, charting on CMJ for 3 weeks with a top position of #128.
EDGE OF ARRIVAL was #1 at WUSB Stony Brook, New York and at WYRE, Waukesha, Wisconsin, #2 at WGDR Plainfield, Vermont, #5 at KMUD Redway, California, WUEV Evansville, Indiana, and CHUO Ottawa, Ontario. It also was featured in heavy rotation at KCIE Jicarilla Apache tribal radio in Dulce, New Mexico. There are many we would like to thank for this wonderful reception and their willingness to air our spoken word/music initiatives. Bless your ears!
On May 20, 1999 the Apes of God performed with the Virgin/Whore Complex at the HOTEL UTAH
The February 11, 1999 performance at Minna Street Gallery at 111 Minna St in San Francisco was a smashing success. The performance was documented in the June 1999 issue of Electronic Musician