Next up, for those of you with a yen for schoolroom performances from a War Zone, please lend yer lugholes a quick listen to the oft-ambulent/always excellent audio verité of AL HURVOT HaAVIV, the superb new album by Israeli quartet Quetev Meriri. Released on Gush Punk Records, there’s a radically beautiful DIY shabbiness pervading this wonderful record, a glorious intrusion of brutal technology and rudimentary school piano that makes AL HURVOT HaAVIV sound as though the Ur-ancestors were informing this band’s every step of the way. Which ur-Ancestors? Well, Quetev Meriri plough those same profoundly catchy & musically unmusical anarcho-refusenik grooves as Wümme-period Faust, early Magical Power Mako, L. Voag’s legendary THE WAY OUT, even poor old Michio Kadotani’s ROTTING TELEPATHIES gets a look in with this seemingly cassette-obsessed bunch. I pity these poor sods’ domestic situation, but it evidently don’t half make for glorious music. Yowzah!
Julian Cope, July Drudion. 2010
www.headheritage.co.uk/addressdrudion/133/2010/
Rated: ***** The world of QM, is obscure, above all for me, B/c I do not understand their language; this feature casts a shadow of mystery and occult over their work. In many sense sometimes, during the listening of this work, you can feel the same atmosphere of "The exorcist movie". Q.M. are noise, dark, symphonic artists and nothing is punk_like, or grunge, from a certain POV they are the Dead Can Dance of the Hebrew music world. But more aggressive, darkish and, another time, they use the mystery of their language like an Art Form; a question of perception, an ancient and unknown, for many people, language increase the mystery of this experience. I like so much their approach, they follow the rules of contemporary music (Cage) creating complex carpets of classical instruments but they add also the dimensions of the electronic processing, and the acid of an ambient-noise oriented ( guitar as the industrial excellence strumento ). Another time Q.M. created a Reign where old B/W pictures coming from alien asylums, occult maneuvers in darkness and sound from the ID and from the most ancient language of our earth became the 4 kings of this "Middle Earth/Middle East" of music and dreams.
Review by: Mariano Equizzi [ marianoe {at} hotmail {dot} it ]
www.chaindlk.com/reviews/?id=5707
released 01 February 2010
קטב מרירי:
שי לוינשטיין – גיטרה, קולות, כלי הקשה
יהוא ירון – קולות, בס, קונטרה בס, כלי הקשה, צעצועים, קסיו
קרן פנפימון זהבי – תופים, כלי הקשה
חיים רחמני – שירה, גיטרה, פסנתר, כלי הקשה, מחשב, צעצועים
אורח: שף רועי הררי - סכינים
לחנים: חיים רחמני
עיבודים והפקה מוזיקלית: קטב מרירי
*חורבות האביב – לחן: קטב מרירי
**חיפה, 6 ביולי 1938 – עיבוד: חיים רחמני
***שחפים מעל שיח מוניס – לחן ועיבוד: חיים רחמני ושי לוינשטיין
עריכות - שי לוינשטיין
הקלטה ומיקס: רונן חג'ג', אולפני קיצ'ה, תל אביב 2009
עיצוב ואיור עטיפה: מירב שחם
www.bananamoon.co.il
ניהול: אסף רחמני, קמ"ע
asaf@kameamusic.co.il
Quetev Meriri:
Shai Lowenstein – Guitar, Backing Vocals, Percussion
Yehu Yaron – Backing Vocals, Bass, Double Bass, Percussion, Toys, Casio
Karen Phenpimon Zehavi – Drums, Percussion
Haim Rachmani – Vocal, Guitar, Piano, Percussion, Computer, Toys
Guest: Chef Roy Harari - Knifes
Music Composed by: Haim Rachmani
Arranged by: Quetev Meriri
*Xurvot HaAviv - Composed by: Quetev Meriri
**Xeifa, July 6 1938 – Arranged by: Haim Rachmani
***Shxafim Me'al Sheix Munis – Composed & Arranged by: Haim Rachmani & Shai Lowenstein
Edited by: Shai Lowenstein
Recorded & Mixed by Ronen Hajaj, Kitcha Studios, Tel Aviv
Cover Art by: Merav Shacham
www.bananamoon.co.il
Management: Asaf Rachmani, Kame'a
asaf@kameamusic.co.il