|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Book
|
|
RER ARBOOK1
|
"Slim, 44-page perfect bound, paperback containing four stories. Illustrated by Mary Thomas. These four stories were written while Allen was working and touring with the Cleveland band, Pere Ubu, and refer directly to those years. Previously published in The Cleveland Edition, The Re Records Quarterly and The Penguin Book of Rock and Roll Writing. Allen Ravenstine was born in Canton, Ohio in 1950. In 1968 his parents were killed in a car crash. He was a student at Ohio State University when students protesting the Vietnam War were shot at Kent State. All universities in Ohio closed, so he left Columbus, where he was studying English literature, never to return. In the following years he worked with an EML analog synthesizer and a Teac four-track tape recorder and in 1974 bought the Plaza, a ramshackle apartment building in Cleveland's inner city, which soon became the home of painters, poets, writers and musicians. In 1975, he co-founded the legendary Cleveland band, Pere Ubu in which he worked until 1988... leaving to become an airline pilot. Taking up music again in 2012, he appeared with Robert Wheeler in the film 'I Dream of Wires', recorded two album length records, 'Farm Report' and 'City Desk'. In 2014, he released his first solo CD, 'The Pharaoh's Bee'. The critically acclaimed 'Waiting for the Bomb' followed in 2018. Allen lives in New York City with his wife Ann."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
RER VAR2-LP
|
'"Eccentricity in music is tricky in that it's difficult to embrace it in moderation. There's risk of having it come off as either overly (and gratingly) deliberate, or teetering over the precipice into full-blown novelty. Pere Ubu co-founder Allen Ravenstine's Waiting For The Bomb is one of these rare exceptions where peculiarity, nuance and genuine warmth align in such a way that it's perched right on that edge and all the more evocative because of it. One of the album's most striking and disorienting attributes is its wide and volatile sound palette. Structured episodically, its eighteen vignettes jump between discrete sonic worlds. Dense clusters of raw sci-fi synth noise sit up against soundtracky miniatures while elsewhere, placid ambience emerges from stiff computer funk. Yet as one surrenders to the strange lurching quality of the journey, the uneasiness it produces somehow becomes grounding. Given Ravenstine's post-punk pedigree, it's unsurprising that this defiant sense of malaise and contradiction isn't just a byproduct of his playful genre tourism. It's actually a key unifying element that even lurks on the periphery of the album's most serene or seemingly innocuous moments. You can hear it in the way that the plasticky squareness of his sample-library orchestrations chafe against live brass and percussion on 'Spirits'. The prickly synthesizer on 'Venus Calling' creeps like toxic fumes through a genteel jazz arrangement. On 'Insomnia' Joe Sorbara's rapid drum kit scatterings punctuate a lugubrious throbbing bed of sound, yet as the ersatz fanfares begin to protrude you're not quite sure whether to be terrified or to laugh--or do both. The record's accompanying notes mention Ravenstine's childhood, steeped in second-hand Cold War paranoia. Waiting for the Bomb seems to embody that tension perfectly: a young, unbridled imagination haunted by both the grave threat, and perverse futuristic allure of total annihilation.' --Nick Storring"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
RER AR2
|
"Eccentricity in music is tricky in that it's difficult to embrace it in moderation. There's risk of having it come off as either overly (and gratingly) deliberate, or teetering over the precipice into full-blown novelty. Pere Ubu co-founder Allen Ravenstine's Waiting For The Bomb is one of these rare exceptions where peculiarity, nuance and genuine warmth align in such a way that it's perched right on that edge and all the more evocative because of it. One of the album's most striking and disorienting attributes is its wide and volatile sound palette. Structured episodically, its eighteen vignettes jump between discrete sonic worlds. Dense clusters of raw sci-fi synth noise sit up against soundtracky miniatures while elsewhere, placid ambience emerges from stiff computer funk. Yet as one surrenders to the strange lurching quality of the journey, the uneasiness it produces somehow becomes grounding. Given Ravenstine's post-punk pedigree, it's unsurprising that this defiant sense of malaise and contradiction isn't just a byproduct of his playful genre tourism. It's actually a key unifying element that even lurks on the periphery of the album's most serene or seemingly innocuous moments. You can hear it in the way that the plasticky squareness of his sample-library orchestrations chafe against live brass and percussion on 'Spirits'. The prickly synthesizer on 'Venus Calling' creeps like toxic fumes through a genteel jazz arrangement. On 'Insomnia' Joe Sorbara's rapid drum kit scatterings punctuate a lugubrious throbbing bed of sound, yet as the ersatz fanfares begin to protrude you're not quite sure whether to be terrified or to laugh--or do both. The record's accompanying notes mention Ravenstine's childhood, steeped in second-hand Cold War paranoia. Waiting for the Bomb seems to embody that tension perfectly -- a young, unbridled imagination haunted by both the grave threat, and perverse futuristic allure of total annihilation. (Nick Storring)"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
RER AR1
|
"Allen Ravenstine, erstwhile eminence grise of classic-era Pere Ubu, was one of the best-integrated and least predictable pioneers of analogue synthesis in rock before he quit both public and musical arenas to pursue an entirely different career. But he never lost his interest in, or his feel for, analogue electronics; and so we have this, lapidary, limited-edition solo release which reaches back to the glory days of Princeton and Cologne in its acceptance, and celebration, of the almost human, frail, fallible, delicate and mysterious qualities of handmade analogue electronics. It was an invitation to contribute to I Dream of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary that led to the recording of an impromptu duo performance on EML-101 and 200 synthesizers, with current Ubu synthesist Robert Wheeler. A pair of albums: City Desk and Farm Report, were released from these sessions in 2013, after which, re-engaged, Ravenstine began to work in earnest on music. By the following June had enough material for a record -- this record, his first solo release, produced by William Blakeney, a Canadian lawyer, studio engineer and associate board member of the Electronic Music Foundation."
|
|
|
|