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Mo​ş​na 1: Encantada Țuică (First Day)

from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016 by AKASHIC RECORDS

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This episode deals with the hard stuff, moonshine. Țuică is the Romanian word for what is more commonly known as palinka. Romanian spirit, in the form of a beverage, anywhere between 30 and 60 proof, distilled from plums. Later on, in Budesti, we will encounter the full "agape" presentation of this liquor as part of the ritual pasti of the Death Wedding. This recording is best heard in a relaxed manner and maybe even accompanied by your own favorite recreational foods and drinks, and-- like Stockhausen's composition "Unbegrenzt" (Without Limit) -- only listen when and if you can assure yourself of uninterrupted time's arrow. Eventually, after hearing the voices of our enchantress, Valeria, her husband, and the echos of the family alchemical pursuits of the last 70 years, you will find me (and my recording gear) stretched out in the dark on the lawn in the courtyard beneath the belfry of the fortified church, enabled to hear bat-wings flitting by my ears (which you can attend yourself, if you are vigilant in your reviews of this document). The quiet is immense. Kids bounce a basketball in a distant court. The Romany ghetto we will discover later sends cantilena across the valley. Crickets overtake the call and then those rippling sounds in the headphones: pipistrelli, their wings like those of the bee, buzzing, greater fugacity.

How we stumbled into this atmosphere turns out to be simple and humble happenstance. My traveling partner was gathering plums fallen from a nearby tree-- as one tends to do in Romania, where fruit falls often this time of year-- and our presence drew the attention of a lady, perhaps in her 60's, who invited us to her domestic compound which, as fate would have it, dwelled a homegrown distillery, a garden with overhanging vines, a pergola of struguri (grapes). Their intelligentsia about the processes taking place in the vats and barrels in the basement seemed vast and magical. We struggled with translations of words across 5 languages. The 80 year old mother of one of them emerges, shows a few teeth in a smile, disappears like a phantom (apparently she oversees all of the operations, but never drinks the stuff herself). A few hours later, after hearing of the lives of their children working abroad, they walked us back to the "Saxon quarter" where I recorded the rest of this session where I recorded and then re-captured live recordings on the dictaphone and narrated them once again into the microphones of the zoom6. Life as a improvised composition.

Somehow, I survived, to record into the 2 days to record the Crypt and the Tower walk. To play the portcullis. And wander in the peripheries.

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from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016, released October 10, 2015

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AKASHIC RECORDS Poland

Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005. ... more

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