Aghiatrias
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Aghiatrias is a Czech "integrated music" ensemble from Prague. The ensemble consists of composer Vladimír Hirsch and sound-engineer Tom Saivon and was started in 1999 as an offshoot of their sympho-industrial band Skrol. Their music is based on an integration of contemporary classical music, dark ambient and ambient industrial) music. The name "Aghiatrias" is the collocation of Greek words ατια (saint) and τριασ (trinity).
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[edit] History and works
In autumn 1999, Vladimír Hirsch (composer, keyboards, samplers, drums, vocals, computer) and Tom Saivon (noise generators, samplers, computer, lyrics) joined their creative efforts in this project. Their goal was an extrapolation and combination of contemporary classical music (Hirsch) and noise (Saivon) tendencies within Skrol, which was eventually, through mutual infiltration by basic theses and antitheses, brought to life as a fully homogenous structure by both members of the group. After more than five years of existence, the band is widely known in the European industrial scene and regularly performs at prestigious European festivals. The ensemble regularly appears in Poland, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Germany. The Czech Republic it generally limits its performances to the regular Prague industrial festival. Aghiatrias also went on a long and successful tour in the US in June 2001. The shows in New York, Boston, Portland (Maine), Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and other towns were mostly a combination of programs by SKROL and AGHIATRIAS. Singer Martina Sanollová (mezzo-soprano) also participates in Aghiatrias' recordings and live performances.
Aghiatrias recordings are typical fully conceptual works. Their first album, Field Mass (2000) is formally a classical opus, with all standard liturgical elements, but settled within a simple central plot framework.
The second album, Epidaemia vanitatis (Epidemy Of Vanity) (2002), the first release on their own label (Integrated Music Records) is, from the viewpoint of musical form, another step towards integrating tonality into atonality and classical into postindustrial. ¨
Their third album Regions Of Limen, finished in August 2003, represents a kind of „aghiatrisation“ of Hirsch’s solo project DE REGIONIBUS LIMINIS. An extensive dark ambient album devoted to the theme of subliminal perception and its fictive musical application. The album was released in March 2004 by the Czech label Epidemie Records.
The fourth album Ethos is a return to thematic work, accomplishing its own concept of so-called "integrated music" that represents a confrontation in broad dimensions of contemporary classics, dark-ambient, noise and industrial.
[edit] Discography
Conceptual albums:
- Field Mass, CatchArrow Recordings, CD, 2000 (47 min.)
- Epidaemia Vanitatis, Integrated Music Records, CD, 2002 (45 min.)
- Regions Of Limen, Epidemie Records, CD, 2004 (69 min.)
- Ethos, Epidemie Records, CD, 2006, (54 min.)
- Reliquary, Integrated Music Records, CD, 2007, (39 min.)
Live:
- Live At Middle East, live recording from Boston (Massachusetts), USA, „Middle East Club“ (21st June, 2001), CD, 2001 (50 min.)
Compilations:
- A Rainy November Day In Wroclaw, Amplexus Records, CD, 2005, (comp. „Syncrasia“)
