Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Thu, 16 Apr 1992 10:54:48 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Blatant self-promotion!

Well, this was actually sort of a joke:
>BTW, anybody want to buy a copy? I promise not to send in 362-line posts
 listing
>how many copies I have left :-) but the temptation will be easier to resist if
>we can sell a few...

But I got a real answer:
>	What kind of music is it? (Not that I have a CD player yet :-) )

So I'll answer it... those of you who object to commercialism on the net
should delete now.

The band is called Judas & Natasha Experiments. Judas and Natasha are real
people, husband and wife, and the band consists of their friends who have
gradually accumulated into a performing unit. Natasha writes these songs,
which deal with the human condition (i.e. they're generally rather painful),
and she sings them in a Bulgarian sort of voice-- not like the Voix Bulgares,
but like the original field recordings, the peasant women who holler across
the mountaintops. (She's also been compared to Yoko Ono.) Then there are up
to seven other people who accompany these songs, who don't necessarily know
which song it is or what the chords are. We think of this as a kind of guided
improvisation, in that we're not exactly playing the song so much as playing
our individual responses to Natasha and our feelings about her music. To the
extent that it works, it does so because we've been friends of Natasha's for
up to 20 years, and we've been a serious performing ensemble for the last 4
years or so, and by now we know each other's stylistic attributes and we can
get a groove going without having to talk about it. (We also recognize most
of the songs by now, although Natasha introduces new material often enough
to keep us on our toes.)

The CD was recorded in two days at a real recording studio, and everything is
a first take-- we couldn't repeat a performance if our lives depended on it,
so we just decided if we didn't do a song justice the first time, we wouldn't
use it. We recorded over a dozen songs and three totally free improvisations,
and ended up using ten songs from Natasha's repertoire, one of mine, and two
of the improvs. We spent twice as long mixing as we did recording-- imposing
endings on performances that didn't really end, improving the sound of our
basically cheap equipment (I still play a bass guitar I bought for $30 back
in high school), trying to give everything a sense of balance... What we got
was not the greatest possible performance, but a fair document of what this
band is about. Various people in the band (especially Judas, who "produced"
in that he was the final authority on how everything should sound) can tell
you about lots of stuff we might have done differently, but I think we're all
fairly proud of it. I know I am; I still like to listen to it.

The band:
Natasha Hanna, vocals, guitar, dulcimer, bells, etc.
Judas Hanna, saxophone, oboe, analog synth, percussion, devices, ghost vocal,
      and "odd rumblings"
Michael Bloom, bass guitar, and piano on my tune
Mark Mills, Eb clarinet, Casio, violin, percussion
Mitch Ahern, "The Lid" (an old wringer washing machine lid with pickups mounted
      on it, creating an interesting electroacoustic feedback system)
Mike Castellana, electric guitar
Max McLean, drums & percussion
Peter Hoepfner (special guest star), piano, and bass guitar on my tune

As a product, it's a CD with 13 tracks, slightly over 61 minutes. The booklet
includes the lyrics for all of Natasha's songs (my tune was an Ernest Noyes
Brookings song setting; you'll have to write to Ernie's publisher). We ask $12
for a copy, plus postage & handling. We also have real-time duplicated cassette
copies available, with very artistic hand-printed covers, for $7.
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