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Alejxis
"Nueva Percusion"
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my biography
Artista de grabacion independiente sin representar, Alejxis va en buscar de colocar un sonido percusivo 'emocional' con una fuerza autocompleta (sin otros instrumentos). Empeze fundador con el grupo 'Tambores Brujos de Brixton' (un barrio inmigrante de Londres) en 1976 con un irlandes y un africano, que tocaron en calle y festival por Inglaterra, saliendo en el BBC por un programa 'Reino Unido Ethnico' varias veces........
En El ano siguiente Los Brujos se conviertaron en ser 'La Presencia', haciendo grabaciones de percusion, pero el equipo se fundo despues del rechazo comercial del nascente Discos Virgin, quien pidieron anadicion de chorales, y sugerio una vuelta hacia ellos 10 anyos adelante..........
Asi El grupo se fracturo con los dos demas aislando su interes por la musica posible por instrumentacion de cuerdas, dejando el Alejxis solo en buscar a la musica puramente percusiva. En esa epoca Londres no tenia movia de tambores salvo con la 'Fabrica de Tambores' djembe y marimba de un duque de Ghana, El Sidi, pero 'La Presencia' fijaban en el sonido de 'trancia' pulsivo mas centro africano , algo aparte de los ritmos de africa del oeste ya entrando al norte...........
Alejxis seguia solo en intentar superar las necesidades de instrumentos, pasando desde entonces dentro de todo tipo y manera para construir y atunar tambores, hasta que en 1987 se soluciono como resolver su pista hacia el sonido exacto........
Alejxis Mientras se traslo hacia el frente sur de Europa, por Almeira, para seguir su otro pasion, bajo el nombre Alexander Sokolov, por esculpir la piedra, una actividad bastante percusivo......
Desde los setenta Alejxis esculpia perenialmente muchas arboles para alocarse la manera de liberar su pasion musical por pura percusion, y con su nueva solucion de 1987 sus estudios continuos en forma troncera le sirvia para dar forma a una orchestra completa en 1995. Los grabaciones ahora forman parte de esa orchestra, que Alejxis preservo en una gran seria de 14 albums hypothetico antes de dar la orchestra para ensenacion infantil medio de una maestra africana de Lesotho, y para su rehabilitacion de los del carcel. Lo que se oye son 45 tambores, en grupos de 6 congas super bajo tumbadores, congas medio de trebles, de altos, y de sopranos, con otros tambores serrados , o para palos, todos graduado en chromatismo de sonido, y tocado asi en seguida con las posibilidades chromaticos .Asi la manera no tiene nada a ver con ni la percusion africano ni latino.
Underground recording percussionist Alejxis takes his percussion to the broadest levels of timbre and pitch in an effort to reach an 'emotional percussion' and a 'wall of drum-sound'.
Alejxis founded the 'The Healing Drums of Brixton' during 1976 with Lori Vambe and Micheal O'Shea, playing street percussion and festivals in London and the U.K, apppearing in the repeated 1976 BBC programme 'Ethnic Britain'. That was the long hot summer and rain was finally made at the Bath Arts Festival. .
In 77 the Brixton transformed into 'Presence' with Alejxis and Lori Vambe before running underground after Virgin Records declined to release the Presence recordings in 1980, saying 'wouldn't you add vocals? and How about trying us again in 10 years!'. Vambe and O'Shea, god rest his soul, thereafter diverted theirselves into string percussion investigations and Alejxis continued skin percussion research. In those days there were no skin drums around. In London only Sidi's Drum Factory produced giga Marimbas, and kept the West African highlife pre-afrobeat jive alight. Lori and Alejxis always followed the central Highland Pulse based drumming ideals.
Alejxis began carving drums from solid timber around 1979, going thru the whole gamut of tuning: Kenya twisted skin straps, Conga type steel bolt tuning, even Taiko nailing, and then finally formulated the idea of the present band as a recording system in 1987, and, by 1995 was ready for recordings of a total skin-percussion orchestra.
The use of heavy rawhide skins needs extreme pitch control, the which Alejxis field recorded in some 60 tracks in 1995 , but thereafter went underground again, to continue concentration on visual arts under the name Alexander Sokolov..
Alejxis thinks maybe the world is now ready for these timbre song waves. Drums built by Alejxis were played to Nelson Mandela at the original London Mandela Concert. Alejxis is most interested in making the thickest skins sing in chordal symphonic alto above related trebles and huge bass.
In the tracks here there are 45 drums: there's a Bass section of 8 giga-Congas from 30 inches downwards played with wool wrapped lead weighted sticks, a chromatic set of 8 softwood kettles for soft sticks, a set of 10 hand-played afro-Congas bridgeing the top end of the Bass all the way up through to long bodied Bongo sized alto/soprano-Congas, a foursome of Bata drums and a section of short bodied stick/hand drums...
The chromatic congas and closed Kettles are played in chord type unisons, which is what gives the background trebles and the foreground singing and sometimes shrieking Conga notes. The manner of playing is entirely un-latin or of african drumming: where these utilise doubled strokes within a single drum, Alejxis plays synchronised hand-beat/sticks on multiple pairs of drums tuned to chords...
Following the field-recordings, the orchestra was used for a Lesotho Childrens Teaching Theatre, then in Prison Rehab...
These sounds here began with a knife, an axe, a sledgehammer, full-drift or long heavy iron bar, chainsaws, ropes and mucho sudor. The Sounds I have been mixing here begin to show me that to mix or 'sculpt' sounds, in this case this plethora of drums, is essentially like sculpting stone: where you think you need to change something to smooth out an obvious problem, you really need to change everything else around it to solve that problem. So to lower the problem-drum it becomes a matter of raising those close around it , in this case those locked already onto the same track, and then, drop the more equalised bunch down again. Seems obvious but...
As to chiselling out a drum, a tip: that cup or gouge chisel, and a big one at that, apart from needing a shaft that is like very very long, is that you need to either make or find a gouge that is bevelled the opposite to normal chisels. That way it will always seek to travel back into the interior of the drum, rather than cutting through the shell towards the outside...
As to timber, I did carve a couple of oak congas. Congas already -by their shape- produce an echo. Put your fingers in an upturned conga and click them, and you'll hear the echo. The sculptural shape of the conga determines its sound, as do all other drums. The closed kettle, where the soundwave cannot escape, will, like a double ended taiko, bounce the skin back outwards. A taiko barrel will bounce that much more than a tapering kettle. Anyway, back to timber. The echo from a hardwood conga is that much more 'cutting' and brutal than with a softwood conga. And, those classic closed tapering african drums, the ones with twisted strips holding the two skins decoratively over the shell, are, like the larger ugandan versions, which are more bulbous, all made of extremely soft wood. So much so that sticks can quickly dent and damage the edges. .
The issue of timber is pretty cardinal. Djembes -apart from those made because of its natural shape from the 'pita' or agave, are carved out of semi-hardwood, and so join in this conga issue. Congas you can take as latinized totally- the aim is fierce echo, to get crispest almost metallic timbre, such that plastic and metal shells are used. The sounds are instantly recognisable, and, as all hand drums become a danger to live bandsets- their timbre interfering so much with other instruments, yet the metalliciced latin congas are includable where african softwood drums are not. Djembes played at the high notes also function well, which is why the west african music depends on them so much.
However, djembes, and there were a set of extra large ones in here, are like irish bodhrans, possessive of a super-rolling bass characteristic, and this part of them can be tough to control in a recording. As to congas, I say this: did a stradivarius get made from a hardwood? No. The timbre is better, if timbre is the aim rather than crisp attack, in the softest timber. In the northern climates that means spruce, in africa it can be what can be called bamboo, that is those pithy pseudo palms, which are soft like a bark rather than a timber.......
my influences
