JUDGE SMITH: Orfeas lauded en Francais

So it seems that we are not the only people to be massively impressed by Judge Smith's Orfeas album. The following review is from a French wesbite, and is translated by those jolly nice people at Google. We are posting it for several reasons, not the least because the sentiments expressed are very similar to our own; like us he was someone that they had vaguely heard of, and like us the release of Orfeas has turned them into a true fan...



Rating: 7.5/10

His name sounds perhaps like a distant echo in the memory of some. Judge Smith is indeed the co-founder of Van der Graaf Generator with Peter Hammill , although it has left the adventure start 1969 before recording the first 33 laps of this group. Occupied by various musical projects, from design stage performances to composing for other artists, creating an opera of modern music in a TV series and even a film, Judge Smith expects 1991 to produce his first album, a collection of songs written between 1968 and 1977 ("Democrazy") and 1993 for his first original album is finally born ("Dome Of Discovery").



In the 2000s, he moves up a gear than seven CDs released since, one of which, "Curly's Airship", he says is the most ambitious rock album ever produced to date. "Curly's Airship" is also the first Songstory , name that gives a narrative form of music he loves and whose "Orfeas" is the third avatar. The man is complex and analysis of his music proves it. Indeed, "Orfeas" is certainly an ambitious and complex concept. Beyond the argument (revisiting the myth of Orpheus by modernizing, becoming a rock guitarist Orpheus and Eurydice idolized his muse that he will eventually), it is especially the bias of the composition s 'is original. Judge Smith has decided to register by September formations of different musical styles, each being associated with a training style.



We discover, therefore, in order of appearance on the disc, a Greek bard singing so hard on bombastic guitar arpeggios Hispanic, the Orfeas Band, rock band, Judge Smith using his technique of speech music on the soliloquies of Orfeas , a technique also used in interviews complimented with a string sextet, techno music to symbolize the passage from dream to reality of the heroes of classic opera songs way between Orpheas and Eurydice, played by Lene Lovich and finally a group of metal for the tragic end of the story. If the bard who plays the role of narrator is amusing at best, annoying at worst, the string sextet mixing romantic and contemporary music and that there is not much to say about the passages techno and metal very marked in their respective genres, back on the other three sets. Orfeas The Band plays instrumental rock classic, even if an instrument is an accordion relatively discreet. It serves mainly as a backdrop to the two soloists are impeccable as John Ellis and David Jackson . John Ellis (the "hands of Orfeas") treats us gratifying guitar solos and removed. David Jackson shines for her many saxophone in However, a register wiser than he who was in his VDGG . The duets between Judge Smith and Lene Lovitch resemble vocal improvisations: no guidelines really emerges from these "songs", this is a conversation where protagonists are expressed in these notes as in musicals where the music follows the text and not the other.



Finally the six soliloquies and two interviews using an original technique called speech music whereby every inflection of the voice is converted into its equivalent music. The "score" is then created and played by an instrument whose sound is superimposed on the voice, generating an echo phenomenon, all served on a discreet orchestration. The effect is pretty amazing and made ​​the soliloquies are sufficiently short that the surprise did not turn into annoyance. All these styles are intertwined in the album, giving a report to the staff and less chaotic. Unnecessary to consider what was coming off the lot titles, "Orfeas" is an indivisible whole that we appreciate as a whole or rejected as totally.



But creativity, inventiveness, attention to detail, the factual quality of the interpretation are undeniable. All sprinkled with a healthy dose of humor. As for assessing the results, it's just a matter of personal taste.

JUDGE SMITH: Popular in Belgium

There really is somethging magickal about Judge Smith's new album 'Orfeas'. I know that I keep banging on about it, but it really is one of the most magickal pieces of music that I have heard in a long time. Clearly othger people think so too, which is why I am reposting this Belgian review. I have not done any editing on it, because I think that correcting the odd grammatical error would take away some of the wide-eyed charm of the rveiew, which is obviously by someone who loves the record as much as I do...

http://www.keysandchords.com/6/post/2012/03/orfeas-a-songstory-by-judge-smith.html

Orfeas: A Story Song By Judge Smith 18/03/2012
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Christopher John Judge Smith is an English composer and co-founder of the band Van der Graaf Generator. Initially he was successful under the name Chris Judge Smith, but ultimately he chose simply Judge Smith. He was the original drummer for Van der Graaf Generator, but when Guy Evans took the drumsticks in hand yet is limited to the vocal parts. After recording the first single "People You Were Going To" Smith decided to drop this project.

Along with saxophonist David Jackson, he formed the band Heebalob. But unfortunately this was also short-lived, zoadat Smith eventually chose solopad. Of the many songs in that period he overwhelming, there are few to excel on his solo debut "Demo Crazy" from 1991. This release was badly crushed in a limited edition and is now a real collectors item. Two years later 'Dome Of Discovery'. The strange thing behind this album is that Smith except the vocals also each note sampled sounds from real instruments arise. In 2000 he completed the double 'Curly's Airship, a project that dealt with the R101 airship disaster in 1930. Eight years we had to wait on 'Long-Range Audio Device'.

On May 9, 2011 appeared than this 'Orfeas', and this is Smith's third straight song story. It is actually an interpretation of the myhte of Orpheus, performed by seven separate ensembles. In addition to Judge Smith granted a lot of famous artists their cooperation. Or how about Gigi Cavalli Cocchi (drums), Dutchman René Commenée (percussion), John 'Fury' Ellis (guitar to include Peter Gabriel, The Stranglers), David Jackson (saxophone), Dorie Jackson (backing vocals), Lene Lovich (vocals), David Minnick (guitar), Ben Nation (cello), Ricardo Odriozola (violin) and Bert Mantilla (accordion). The song story is neatly divided into three acts. Together accounted for 34 tracks or 77 minutes and 42 seconds exactly. Smith eagerly makes use of wild contrasting music is a melting pot of Southern guitars, classical string orchestras, meditative trance sound and metal rock. Some describe it as ethereal pop, though I would seriously consider this term.

Judge Smith is a magical musician who's counting a coherent story. Philip Verhaeghe (3)

JUDGE SMITH: new podcast now online.

Jon Kirkman emailed me a few minutes ago.

"Just so you can do a story about it there is a new Judge Smith Podcast live on the Gonzo website HERE

It is almost an hour long and is Judge in conversation with me and we are also playing tracks from the Orfeas album. There will be two more Judge Smith Podcasts in the next few weeks".

For the record, I am still engaged in a love affair with this extraordinary album, and am very much looking forward to talking to Judge myself, some time soon...

JUDGE SMITH: Dutch Review

CHRIS JUDGE SMITH - Orfeas (2011)

Co-founder of Van der Graaf Generator ...

... made ten albums and now comes with 'Orfeas', a retelling in a modern style of the classic story of Orpheus, the mystical musician to the Land of the Dead travels in search of the lost Eurydice.

The legendary Chris Judge Smith is This "movie for your ears", as the accompanying letter states, including assisted by David Jackson, nice to him after his forced departure from VDGG again to hear, guitarist John Ellis (Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Stranglers), drummer Gigi Cavaalli Cocchi (Moon Garden, Mangala Vallis) and Lena Lovich (the famous new wave singer).

Smith's love for a combination of song, spoken word and music is here performance exhibited in a 34-piece 'three act-song story'. So there you love but it appeals to me: strong musicianship, excellent production and great songs all take the strong and fairly strong musical interludes, a sort of mixture of death metal, trance, rock and classical music, I sometimes just to short. Smith is also a novelty which he, with a relatively unknown technique, recorded vocals into music and melody. I find it intriguing but it is hard to explain. Listening is the motto.

Orfeas is an excellent and successful attempt of Smith to this wonderful, classic story telling again, wrapped in a fine coat in which musical creativity and humor have found their place. The sleek layout and the book make it down. Harry 'JoJo' de Vries (what a week 11)

JUDGE SMITH: Many layers of the onion

ORFEAS, Part Three
I am still trying to get my head around this record. The more I listen to it the more complex it becomes. One of the most irritating things about much popular music is the wysiwyg sundrome - basically what you see IS what you get, and the thing about artists like Judge Smith is that it is nothing like that.

It works on all sorts of levels. On the surface it is a jolly collection of songs which tells a story with engaging characters.

But it is also a whole collection of different pieces of music in a number of different idioms. It also features Lene Lovich (who is a great and sadly underappreciated singer) and John Ellis, the guitarist from The Vibrators who was one of my inspirations back when I was a spiky haired little herbert just about to be expelled from a not-very-good public school back in the day.

It is also a remarkably complex allegory, which uses a Chorus in the fashion of Greek Classical drama. But it also has drug jokes (one at least).

I am giving it a few more days, and will be listening to it again. Judge, by the way, emailed me yesterday. He seems a jolly good fellow, and I will be interviewing him in the not too distant future, so watch this space dudes and dudettes..

JUDGE SMITH: Speech Music and Allegorical tales

ORFEAS, Part Two

We sat down to listen to it last night, and although I know vaguely what I was expecting, but what we got was nothing like it.

For one thing I didn't expect it to be so enjoyable. I was expecting a piece of heavy Art with a capital A, but what we got was definitely well crafted, artostically valid, yadda yadda yadda, but it was also really entertaining and good fun.

It tells the story of George Orpheus, a rock guitarist of a certain age, whose career is dependent on his artistry on a magickal guitar called Eurydice (which he completely misunderstands, misreading it as "Furry Dice"). It transpires that Eurydice is actually his muse (no, not a three piece rock band from Teignmouth, that would have a capital M, duh!) and the magick guitar was her way of communicating her creative spirit into the engagingly numb skull of George O.

When George O turns his back on his creativity, disaster strikes....

One of the most striking things about the album is the way that Judge Smith uses a singular technique that I had not come across before:

"Speech-music involves taking a recording of a spoken voice, and then setting that recording to music; a music that closely follows the rhythm of the spoken words and the natural rise and fall of the speaker’s voice. This rather demanding and arduous technique was first heard in the 1980s, in the work of a small number ofcomposers and performers, all from the Americas. These include Scott Johnson, Hermeto Pascoal, and Steve Reich, while more recently René Lussier and Charles Spearin have continued to develop the idea. But perhaps the most accomplished speech- music practitioner to have emerged is another American, David Minnick,whom I was lucky enough to involve in the Orfeas project. My own initial experiments in the field can be heard on the 2007 L-RAD album Long Range Audio Device, and my only minor claim to originality in using the technique is that I believe I mightbe the first composer to use 'acted' or deliberately performed speech to generate the music, as opposed to documentary recordings of one kind or another".

JUDGE SMITH: Orfeas (Yer Press Release)

2/29/2012 - London, UK - Independent composer and recording artist Judge Smith, who in 1967 co-founded with Peter Hammill the influential underground band Van der Graaf Generator, has created a movie for your ears – a new concept CD titled 'Orfeas'; a retelling of the ancient myth of Orpheus, the magical musican who travels to the Land of the Dead in search of the lost Eurydice. Since his Van der Graaf Generator days, Judge Smith has been responsible for a wide variety of music projects, including four stage-musicals (with productions at the Edinburgh Traverse, Sheffield Crucible and the Lyric, Hammersmith), opera and cantata libretti, songs for the ‘70s TV show ‘Not The Nine O’clock News’, and songs recorded by Peter Hammill and Lene Lovich. His film ‘The Brass Band’ has won several international awards. Judge Smith's music is complex in structure and often fragmented, but is always tuneful and strangely memorable, with humor never far from the surface. In the course of a twenty-year independent solo career, he has released ten CDs and DVDs.

“My principal interest is in telling stories with words and music,” explains Judge. “Some of my CDs are collections of songs, the usual format for an album, although people say that my songs are unusual and idiosyncratic. However, three of my projects are in a different category. Over many years, I have developed a new way of making extended musical narratives that I call ‘Songstories’, which are more complex than song-cycles or ‘rock operas’. They are not ‘musicals’ either, since they are pretty well un-stageable, and are each intended to be being complete as an ‘audio experience’. The three Songstories are all very different. The first, ‘Curly’s Airships’, a double CD with a running time of two hours and twenty minutes, was completed in 2000 after six years full-time work, and tells the story of the 1930 R-101 Airship disaster. It is probably one the largest and most ambitious pieces of rock music ever recorded. The second, ‘The Climber’, released in 2009, in complete contrast, is performed by me with an unaccompanied Norwegian male voice choir, and a double bass. The third Songstory is ‘Orfeas’, my own interpretation of the Classical myth.”

This Songstory uses wildly contrasting styles of music to tell its story, including instrumental Rock, Mediterranean guitar music, modern classical string sextet music, classical Trance dance music and Death Metal. 'Orfeas' also features a radical, and little-known, technique for transforming recorded speech into melody. “As far as I am aware, I am the only person making work like this, and I think it would be probably fair to say that no one else does what I do,” says Judge.

“Best known for his role in the formation of Van de Graaf Generator, Judge Smith is clearly not an artist with much interest in toeing the line. 'Orfeas', a three-act 'songstory' in which Smith and a host of guest performers re-imagine the titular Greek legend as he headlines at Wembley Arena, is effectively an exercise in schizophrenic musical theatre, replete with rambling soliloquies and plot-revealing dialogue set to avant-garde chamber music, that takes in everything from Jaunty rock radio-jingles and ethereal pop.” Dom Lawson – Classic Rock Presents Prog

In recent news, on November 6, 2011 a performance of Judge Smith's 'The House That Cried' was held in Como, Italy. The show also took place on November 20, 2011 in Chiasso, Switzerland.

For more information visit www.Judge-Smith.com

To purchase Judge Smith – Orfeas CD http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/product_details/15417

Press inquiries: Glass Onyon PR, PH: 828-350-8158, glassonyonpr@cs.com

JUDGE SMITH - Tell me the old old story

ORFEAS, Part One

I've got a confession to make. I have vaguely heard of Chris Judge Smith over the years, but until this evening I hadn't ever got around to listening to him. And not for the first time in my life, I am cursing the unfortunate omission.

OK, what do you think when you hear that an ex-member of Van der Graaf Generator has made a mildly avant garde concept album based upon the classic story of Orpheus and Eurydice?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Rock music is often a medium prone to hyperbole, and the word 'classic' is one of the most over used words in the genre. However, when one finds out that the earliest known appearance of the story is in the 6th Century BC, it makes claims that "Robbie Williams has made a 'Classic' album" seem pretty small beer, but I digress - I do that a lot, you'll find)

Still digressing, for those of you who are not familiar with the old old story about how Orpheus lost his wife and went into Hades to find her, you had better check it out HERE)

You know it is going to be classy; you know it is going to be edufite; you know that it is going to be well crafted. But, bloody hell, you don't realise that it is going to be so much fun! Corinna, (my wife), Graham (my best mate) and Prudence (my rather silly bulldog/boxer bitch) sat down to listen to it this evening, and none of us got even slightly what we expected....

To be Continued...