Date:    Fri, 3 Jun 1994 16:55:30 -0400
From:    John Walker <jwalker@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: An Ultra Vivid Scene Primer (article)

Here is an article I recently posted in Compuserve's "Rocknet."
Hope you enjoy it!


 ULTRA VIVID SCENE; A PRIMER

 by Johnny Walker (Black)


      Probably one of the finest, if most unheralded (except by a
 few smart rock critics) bands to inhabit the increasingly
 corporatized and bland rock landscape over the past few years has
 been Ultra Vivid Scene (UVS), initially a project hatched from the
 subversive mind of singer/guitarist Kurt Ralske.  Ignoring trends,
 Ralske has created over the span of three releases (%Ultra Vivid
 Scene%, %Joy 1967-1990%, %Rev%) a musical world that summons up
 images of Baudelaire and Wilde more than of chest-beating Seattle
 grungemeisters.  In fact, Ralske belongs only amongst the most
 elevated of rock artists to appear since the genre's inception; in
 time, Ultra Vivid Scene will take its place in rock history beside
 another great--and for years, ignored--band, The Velvet
 Underground.


      Ultra Vivid Scene is the result of a long musical odyssey on
 the part of Kurt Ralske, one that began with him entering Boston's
 Berklee College of music at the tender age of 16--a prodigy indeed!
 This interest in jazz soon evolved into something different through
 the influence of New York's no wave, punk jazz scene (of which
 James Chance, of James White and the Blacks, was a seminal figure),
 inspiring not only Ralske, but figures such as Thurston Moore
 (Sonic Youth) and Michael Gira (Swans), people who "got up on stage
 and just didn't give a fuck what they even sounded like; they just
 wanted to get it all out.  It was very impressive, inspiring"
 Ralske says.

      This inspiration led Ralske to relocate to the slums of London,
 England, in 1986, there soaking up the vibes of the nascent noise-pop
 scene being founded by the Jesus And Mary Chain.  Ralske
 recalls JAMC's Douglas Douglas and his mini nightclub called Speed,
 which featured 60's pop music played at thunderous levels; "the
 Shirelles or the Mamas and Papas would start to distort and sound just
 like the Jesus and Mary Chain" he says.  After a brief run with a UVS
 prototype called Crash (the name taken from a J.G. Ballard novel
 about a man obsessed with violent car crashes), it was time for
 Ralske to return to New York to "get desperate," and to assimilate and
 re-assemble all the various influences of his musical life, the result being
 the conception of Ultra Vivid Scene.

 1st release: %Ultra Vivid Scene% (1988)
     Ralske's major obsessions all appear on this self-titled first
 release, which sounds as vital today as the day it first appeared.
 These interests focus not on the daytime, socio-political world,
 but on the nighttime, Dionysian realm, the realm which lays behind
 closed doors and closed eyelids.  It's as if Ralske took up the
 provocative theme of The Velvet Underground's "Venus In Furs" and
 formed a band to deal with it.  At any rate, the "band" on this first
 release is, for the most part, Ralske himself, "off in a
 private world" as he puts it, in the studio.  Perhaps the
 quintessential UVS song appears here: "The Mercy Seat" (not the
 Nick Cave song but just as good, which is saying something!)
 describes a situation in which "when the blood begins to
 flow/there's nowhere else to go/I feel complete in the mercy seat."
 The accompanying music is appropriately thunderous, an ominous riff-rocker
 combined with a lyrical subtlety unknown to grunge merchants; in concert,
 this number often metamorphoses into a free-jazz, Velvets-styled
 guitar assault.

       %Ultra Vivid Scene% presents us with Ralske as the
 postmodern John Donne, mixing sexual and spiritual metaphors,
 obsessed with the interplay between the high and the low.  Thus we
 also have "The Whore of God" ("But a kiss on the lips/is far too
 much for anyone/so kneel and pray until you're sore"), an ethereal
 number yoking the smell of incense with the raunch of the street.
 Overall, %Ultra Vivid Scene% is a stunning debut comparable to
 %Andy Warhol Presents The Velvet Underground% and %Love% (by the
 classic 60's L.A. group of the same name), a definitive statement
 of purpose introducing themes which continue to appear in UVS
 material to this day.

 2nd release: JOY 1967-1990 (1990)


      The enigmatic title of UVS's sophomore release can be
 explained by Ralske's aesthetic fascination with the subject of
 death; the title is Ralske's fictive inscription of a 23-year-old
 girl's tombstone.  For Ralske, the contemplation of death, perhaps
 the ultimate taboo in our "be young have fun drink pepsi" consumer
 culture, is one way of freeing yourself from the constrictions of
 accepted ways of thinking and behaving.  "Thinking about [death]
 can be a real liberating experience," he says, "because death is a
 part of life.  And if you don't deal with that fact, you're fooling
 yourself."

       For an album based on such themes, %Joy% is far from a
 depressive, Joy Division-styled foray into darkness.  Instead, the
 album is one long, languid, sensual, narcotic buzz, the tracks
 flowing into each other freely, like the bodies at an orgy (a
 simile Kurt might enjoy!).  Among UVS fans, %Joy% brings knowing
 smiles and nods of approval; tracks such as "Praise The Low"
 ("Emily is hanging round/by her feet strung upside down/swaying
 back and forth without a sound"), a smoky Renaissance dirge replete
 with bodhran, viol and recorder, and the soaring "The Kindest Cut"
 are razor-sharp and ultra-vivid pop-rock of the highest calibre.
 Ironically, only Ralske seems to feel that %Joy% was infected by
 any hint of the sophomore jinx; producer Hugh Jones, who Ralske
 personally admires, nevertheless exerted too much control over the
 finished product to suit him.  "I feel like that record was taken
 away from me" he says, as UVS fans nevertheless clutch it tightly
 to their chests.


 3rd Release: %Rev% (1992)
     This most recent UVS release is a departure from previous
 efforts, in that, as much as %Ultra Vivid Scene% and %Joy 1967-1990%
 were results of one man in a studio, %Rev% is the result of
 three men in a room, "jamming," as they used to say (and still do).
 Perhaps lending credence to my description of the "narcotic" vibe
 of his previous release, Ralske sums up the new band-oriented feel
 of %Rev% by stating that "it's not something I'm at all proud of,
 but if you're taking drugs, it's hard to play with other
 musicians."

       %Rev%, then, is a result of some changes, both personal and
 musical, that Kurt Ralske has made in his life.  One change is his
 conversion experience leading away from a reliance on studio
 technology toward a more Zen-like philosophy of going with the
 musical flow, also reflecting an attitudinal return to his jazz
 roots.  "The best music happens when people just give up their will
 and go with the flow" Ralske says.  "I really hate machines now: the
 stupidest thing that ever happened in music was when somebody brought
 a computer into the recording studio."

       While the previous two UVS releases tended toward the clipped,
 strictly delineated strictures of the pop song, an Apollonian
 presentation of Dionysian subject matter, as Camille Paglia might
 say, %Rev% explodes these boundaries in search of "the moment," that
 elusive groove which is the magic elixir for all true musicians,
 and which can only be found in a live situation: the album is
 basically Ralske, bassist Chuck Daley and drummer Julius Kelpacz,
 live off the studio floor.  As such, %Rev% is probably the least
 immediately "catchy," but the most musically rewarding, of all the
 UVS releases.  "Thief's Love Song" is the albums's centerpiece, the
 most sensual mood Ralske has yet conjured up, a "dreamy love/sex
 song between two women, I think" ("Beneath the sea a fish/is
 matching kiss for salty kiss").  For fans of hard-rock, the band
 summons up the atmospheric "Kashmir" era of Led Zeppelin for the
 extended jams "Medicating Angels" and "Blood and Thunder,"
 Ralske fashioning a noise-maelstrom with his slide guitar.

 WHAT NEXT?

      Unfortunately, doing things your way in the music business is
 never easy, and Kurt Ralske's new direction didn't sit well with
 his label for all three UVS albums, 4AD, which is undergoing other
 changes, none of which seem for the better.  So UVS is label
 shopping, but in the meantime the band has released an "official"
 bootleg tape called %Ultra Vivid Scene Live at the Masquerade%,
 taken off the sound board from the Atlanta stop of the rocking 1993
 tour for %Rev%.  The tape is a neat summation of the best UVS
 moments from the first three lps, with an emphasis on material from
 %Rev%; the versions here of "Thief's Love Song" and "Mercy Seat"
 are especially thrilling.  The 70 min. tape is available from

 UVS Info
 P.O. Box 4647
 NY, NY
 10185-0040, USA

 for $10.00 postage paid ($14 overseas, US currency, Int'l money
 order).  4-6 weeks for delivery.

 Do yourself a favour and check out any or all of UVS's fine
 releases.  It's the true "alternative" to much of the faceless
 stuff clogging the market today.

 Send any questions or comments re UVS to me at

 70223.177@compuserve.com
 or
 jwalker@epas.utoronto.ca

 thanks

 Johnny Walker (Black)


--
"I have needed drugs to quench the impulse
to get at once onto my feet, and live out some
convenient identity of cunning and contriving."          Alexander Trocchi

Date:    Sun, 25 Sep 1994 11:35:56 -0700
From:    Pacific Groove <tower@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: 4AD's best black sheep: UVS

the subtidal one's reply to vilexile's letter!!!
>
> On Sat, 24 Sep 1994, Martin Wagner wrote:
>
> > > yeah, I'm a little worried. The powers that be have not been kind to Mr.
> > > Ralske; he's been dropped by five different labels now, by my count, and
> > > so we worrysome UVSers out here are kind of on edge. :(
>
> > Hmmm...I take it you mean 4AD was the fifth of those labels. Drag. Well,
> > hope the news isn't too bleak.
>
> I'm thinking 4AD, Rough Trade, Columbia, Sony...I guess that's it. I
> don't know why I thought there were five. Anyway, these were all labels
> that were releasing his records at one point and could probably be
> putting them out now if they wanted. Using that criterion, you can add
> Warner to the list, too, I guess.

Perhaps the outlook is not so bleak.  Rough Trade went under, and therefore
couldn't possibly keep any bands.  Columbia & Sony are one and the same as
far as the music industry is concerned (I think Rev came out domestically
around the same time as Sony started their new alternative label "Chaos" so
since they are all one and the same, they just switched Kurt over to it.
I am not sure what UVS stuff was released by Warner Bros.  I looked over my
collection and found nothing, so if UVS was dropped by Sony & 4AD, that would
make two (since Rough Trade shouldn't really count), so let's not give up
hope that there will be more UVS records!

Jim, anxiously awaiting new UVS, but for the meantime listening to
        Lightning (72bpm/4am) :)