In 1988, an avant garde group called Cassiber (German
composer and music-theatre director Heiner Goebbels,
Christoph Anders, and British percussionist Chris Cutler)
wrote and recorded 'A Face We All Know', a CD which
was released in 1989.
According to Chris Cutler, "the CD embodies an
implied narrative, could be a sleep deprived dictator,
maybe locked in a radio station, partly remembering,
partly hallucinating while the old order goes down in
flames outside. The Pynchon focused this -- effectively
speaking for 'the outside'. (I can't tell you how reluctant
I am even to write this. I hate to limit a work - please
take this merely as a possible orientation). It was
realized in 1988 in East Berlin, before the epochal
changes of 89 - a curious mingling of fiction and fact.
The title of course is from one of the Thomas Pynchon
extracts, and is a narrative indication." Chris
Cutler also writes: "I wrote 'A Face' (the narrative
idea and my text) in Newfoundland in, I think, 1987,
two years before the East block crumbled. Heiner and
Christoph proposed incorporating the Pynchon texts.
About the way the CD was conceived and created, Cutler
states that it began "with no thought of Pynchon
I'm afraid. Heiner and Christoph proposed the use of
the Gravity's Rainbow extracts half way through the
composition process. So, it can't really be said that
that the CD was inspired by or was in any way a reaction
to Gravity's Rainbow or Thomas Pynchon, though the Pynchon
text is indispensable to it in its final form. We cleared
the use of the texts, of course, and sent a copy of
the finished work to Pynchon's agent."
Heiner Goebbels writes: "we (a three musician
art-rock group called Cassiber (1982-1992), with the
British drummer Chris Cutler, Christoph Anders and me)
made up a number of songs for the album "A Face
We All Know," using texts taken from Gravity's
Rainbow - especially from its very beginning and very
end; songs like "A Screaming Comes Across the Sky,"
"Under Archways," "They Began to Move,"
"Start the Show," etc. The CD came out in
89, and the most surprising fact about it was for me,
that -- not knowing who the author was or where he author
lived, but still in tune with a lot of mysterious information
about him, I got the license to use his words within
a day or two by fax, through his New York publisher."
Texts by Chris Cutler (1-5, 11-17) and Thomas
Pynchon (7-10, 14), except 6 by Christoph Anders
and German texts (8, 12, 14) by Rainald Goetz.
I.
This was the way it was. I don't remember. I took notes.
We knew nothing. People came and went. One night we
were watching that - the programme about the idiot who
loses everything...
It was 2 'O clock in the morning. I'd drunk too much
and fallen asleep in a chair. I woke in a panic. the
TV was howling. My mouth was dry. I was burning up.
I was burning. We were going into a tunnel we would
never come out of. I knew. It was the end.
I thought I'd gone crazy. All the Old Gods had come
back. As big as houses. I was twelve. All I remember
is the stink: Ambrosia, sour on their breath like rancid
milk. But I learned their secret: they vomited their
own space.
I remember everything. I see it all before my eyes.
Even the words. In letters that roll like credits when
a film is over. They float in front of me. When I close
my eyes I see what I think. And the words. In terrible
colours.
Chris Cutler.
II.
The rhythmic clapping resonates inside these walls,
which are hard and glossy as coal: Come-on! Start-the-show!
Come-on! Start-the-show! The screen is a dim page spread
before us, white and silent. The film has broken, or
a projector bulb has burned out ... The last image was
too immediate for any eye to register ... And in the
darkening and awful expanse of screen something has
kept on, a film we have not learned to see ... it is
now a closeup of the face, a face we all know. (p. 760)
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before,
but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too
but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the
cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders ....
and glass somewhere far above that would let the light
of the day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the
way the glass will fall - soon - it will be spectacle:
down in total blackout, without one glint of light,
only great invisible crashing. (p. 3)
They go in under archways, secret entrances of rotten
concrete that only looked like loops of an underpass
... and it is poorer the deeper they go ... ruinous
secret cities of poor, places whose names he has never
heard ... the walls break down, the roofs get fewer
and so do the chances for light. The road ... more broken,
cornering tighter and tighter until all at once, much
too soon, they are under the final arch: brakes grab
and spring terribly... (p. 3)
They have begun to move. They pass In line, out of
the main station, out of downtown, and start pushing
into older and more desolate parts of the city. Is this
the way out ? Faces turn to the windows, but no one
dares ask, not out loud. Rain comes down. (p. 3)
Thomas Pynchon (Page references are to the 1973
Viking/ Penguin edition of Gravity's Rainbow)
III.
"This was the way it was. I don't remember. I
took notes.
We knew nothing. People came and went. One night we
were watching that - the programme about the idiot who
loses everything....
It was 2 'O clock in the morning. I'd drunk too much
and
fallen asleep in a chair. I woke in a panic. The TV
was
howling. My mouth was dry. I was burning up. I was
burning. We were going into a tunnel we would never
come
out of. I knew. It was the end.
I thought I'd gone crazy. All the old Gods had come
back.
As big as houses. I was twelve. All I remember is the
stink.
Ambrosia, sour on their breath like rancid milk. But
I
learned their secret: they vomited their own space.
I remember everything. I see it all before my eyes.
Even
the words. In letters that roll like credits when a
film is
over. They float in front of me. When I close my eyes
I see
what I think. And the words. In terrible colours.
Time gets faster as we get better at it. At the end
we can
jump right into the middle. Then we go.....somewhere
else. And then …. what ?
It's never quiet. I went away. I went as far as I could.
I
couldn't believe it. It was worse than the traffic,
worse
than the chatter, worse than anything: crash, crash,
crash, crash, crash - my own blood crashing in my veins.
It's all too expensive. It all costs too much. I won't
pay, I
can't pay.
You want to know my philosophy, my hopes and fears,
my
outlook on life ? I was there once. You can see it all
there.
I was old when I was young. I was robbed. I was cheated.
O
yes, they loved my book. Everybody read it. I was right
after all. But I stopped caring when nothing resisted
any
more. Now I keep awake with pills and injections
because....lf I sleep...we have to be on our guard...and
sleep, I have always known this, is alien - dangerous.
A little father. A little farther.
After the dark, the light. Everybody knows that."
(Chris Cutler, Newfoundland, 1987)
CD
CASSIBER A Face We All Know
Chritoph Anders: singing, sampling keyboard,
guitar Chris Cutler: drums, electrics, voice Heiner Goebbels: keyboards, sampling, Guitar
on 16, bass, computerwork
Music by Heiner Goebbels and Chritoph Anders,
except 6 by Rene Lussier and 7 by Chritoph
Anders. Arangements by Cassiber.
Engineered by George Morawietz, assisted by Uwe Zeigenhagen.
Special thanks to Georg Katzner.
1
This was the way it was
10:52
2
Remember
2:52
3
Old Gods
0:27
4
2 'o clock in the morning
2:37
5
Philosophy (1)
0:07
6
Gut
3:46
7
Start the show
3:03
8
A screaming comes across the sky
3:12
9
They go in under archways
4:12
10
They have begun to move
3:33
11
Time gets faster
0:28
12
It's never quiet
2:25
13
Philosophy (2)
0:05
14
A screaming holds
1:57
15
Philosophy (3)
0:32
16
I was old
3:54
17
The way it was
5:06
18
To move
2:54
total playing time:
42:03
Availability
Cassiber's "A Face We All Know" is released
by ReR Megacorp in London,
distributed in the US by Cuneiform Records, P.O. Box
6517,
Wheaton, MD 20906
Information about Cassiber was first brought to our
attention by Sanjay Kumar, who said: "I played
keyboards in a couple of bands called Utotem and 5uu's,
whose music is in a similar vein [to Cassiber's], although
without the improvisation. In fact, I recall meeting
Heiner Goebbels in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1990 at an
art rock festival where Utotem gave its first European
performance."
