Category Archives: Greame Revell

Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles – The Music Of Adolf Wölfli is a tribute to the mad Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930), painter and music composer. His music was never played but just written on paper. Musique Brut presents it for the first time, interpreted by a number of industrial / experimental international artists. Wölfli had a troubled childhood. He suffered abuse and molestation and was orphaned at the age of 10, thereafter growing up in a series of state -run foster homes. He worked as a farm labourer and briefly joined the army but was later convicted of attempted child molestation for which he served prison time. Sometime after being freed he was arrested for a similar offence and was admitted in 1895 to the Waldau Clinic in Berne, Switzerland, a psychiatric hospital where he spent the rest of his adult life. He was very disturbed and sometimes violent on admission, leading to him being kept in isolation for his early time at hospital, perhaps due to his psychosis which led to intense hallucinations. At some point after his admission Wölfli began to draw. Unfortunately his earliest drawings have not survived, so it is difficult to know exactly when he began his artistic explorations, although his first surviving works (a series of 50 pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906. Walter Morgenthaler, a doctor at the Waldau Clinic, took a particular interest in Wölfli’s art and his condition, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921 which first brought Wölfli to the attention of the art world. Morgenthaler’s book was revolutionary in many ways as it was not simply a clinical study but argued that a person with a severe mental illness could be a serious artist and had the ability to make important contributions to the development of art. The wonderful booklet about Wölfli and the artists is included in the zip file. Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles – The Music Of Adolf Wölfli was released on vinyl by Musique Brut (BRU 002) in 1986.

Tracks:

1. Graeme Revell – Necropolis, Amphibians And Reptiles
2. Graeme Revell – Countess Saladine
3. Graeme Revell – Chimpnags-Apes Of The Union Canada: America
4. Graeme Revell – Allgebrah
5. Graeme Revell – Ebony Tower In The Orient. Water Fanfare No.1
6. Graeme Revell – The Balli
7. DDAA – St. Adolf’s Comet
8. DDAA – Natural Fhorm Of The Holy-Light-Island In The Pacific Ocean
9. DDAA – Rahma Margarine
10. Nurse With Wound – Lea Tantaaria
11. Nurse With Wound – Great-God-Father-Nieces

(Tracks 8 & 9 are linked together)

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