Jewlia Eisenberg (Charming Hostess, Red Pocket) - 7 Albums (1998 - 2010) Re-up

Charming Hostess is a whirl of eerie harmony, hot rhythm and radical braininess. Our music explores the intersection of text and the sounding body– complex ideas expressed physically, based on voice and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. We live where diasporas collide, incorporating piyyutim and Pygmy counterpoint, doo-wop and niggunim, work songs and Torah chanting. The texts speak of mysticism and sex; angels and demons; and the trials and joys of love and sex…

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Charming Hostess - это вихрь жуткой гармонии, горячего ритма и радикальной безмозглости. Наша музыка исследует пересечения текста и звуков тела - сложных идей, выраженных физически на основе голоса и вокальных ритмов, хлопанья в ладоши и сердцебиения, сексуальных вздохов и молчания. Мы живём на стыке диаспор, включая в себя звучание пигмеев и пиютим, ду-вопа и нигуним, рабочих песен и скандирования Торы. Тексты говорят о мистицизме и сэксе, ангелах и демонах, судебных заседаниях и наслаждениях любви…

Charming Hostess:

Charming Hostess is a RIO/Avant-Prog band based out of San Francisco, California. They are a result of a collaboration between three members of IDIOT FLESH and a group of female vocalists and dancers. These musicians got started at the infamous Barrington Hall in U.C. Berkeley along with bands such as ACID RAIN, 501 SPANISH VERBS and KING BEAVER. For Over a decade, Charming Hostess has been showcasing their take on World Music and mixing it with Balkan Folk music, A Capella, Judeo-Arabic praise songs, Pygmy counterpoint, doo-wop, Torah Chanting, American country, and tying it all together with their trademark female vocal harmonies. The band has released three studio albums: their debut Eat in 1999, Sarajevo Blues in 2004, and Punch in 2005. Many of the original members of Charming Hostess were also a part of the album Trilectic released in 2001. The inside booklet is actually subtitled as a Charming Hostess release. Three of the members of Charming Hostess - Nils Frykdahl, Dan Rathburn, and Carla Kihlstedt - would go on to form SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM.

~ Progarchives

My first ever Charming Hostess' album was their Tzadik-released "Sarajevo Blues" almost shocking collection of sad songs in part based on Bosnian war-time poet lyrics with Balkan folklore elements and downtown punk sharpness. I fell in love with the band after that album.
Their debut "Eat" came to me second. Aerial and quirky mix of excellent a Capella female vocals, deep bass, sax,violin,flutes,Eastern European/Jewish/Latin folklore mixed with always melodic post punk radical elements,everything played and recorded at the highest possible level! 14 quite short compositions with often shocking lyrics mostly in English (but in Spanish and one of Slavic languages as well), Balkan rhythms, klezmer light flavor and strong West Coast harmonies! Yes, from now I know I really love this band!

One of the best American RIO album I ever heard! Should attract wide circles of listeners (unless you're allergic to folklore in your music or some radical lyrics).Very recommended.

~ snobb, Progarchives

Sometimes you just can't say it any better: "For 8 years Charming Hostess was a rock band that blended eerie harmonies, complex rhythms, and a playfulness about gender. Charming Hostess drew on women's vocal traditions (primarily from Eastern Europe and North Africa), and integrated them with American folk forms both white and black."

So says the Charming Hostess website, and so it is. Eat, the group's first CD, was a revelation: taking folk musics both familiar and unfamiliar and blending them into their twisted mix of rock, jazz, and funk. It's a testament to their creativity that seven years later, there still isn't anything that sounds quite like it, with the exception of the band's long-delayed followup album, Punch. The majority of the songs here are traditional folk songs arranged by Jewlia Eisenberg for Charming Hostess' three-woman harmonized vocal attack, as well as their often quirky instrumental inclinations (many of which involve tricky time signatures). You'll find Hungarian, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Turkish, African-American, and Bulgarian traditional songs, in addition to oddities like a rearrangement of "Won't You Keep Us Working" by The Residents and a tremendously effective musical interpretation of the Yiddish proverb "Sha Shtil."

With such a diversity of source material, it's a testament to Eisenberg's vision that Eat still feels coherent, and Charming Hostess maintains a distinct and unmistakable identity. At the core of that identity are the three wonderfully talented vocalists, whose voices blend in pleasing and addictive ways throughout the album. But there's also an irrepressible sense of humor, a strange edge to the lyrical content (much of which deals with gender roles and identity and intimate relationships), and an overall playfulness that holds everything together. In fact, it's the more playful pieces — the catchy "Klezsex" and the funked-up, rocked-out Bulgarian folksong "Elenke," on which Jenny Scheinman absolutely shines on electric violin, among them — that are my lasting favorites.

The members of the sadly now-defunct Charming Hostess "big band" are true musical chameleons — some members of groups like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Faun Fables, and so on, some active in the prolific West Coast avant-jazz scene — so it should be no surprise that Eat is similarly schizophrenic. Yet somehow it all fits together beautifully: with this album, Jewlia Eisenberg successfully found common threads that run through all folk musics regardless of the extent of their separation in time and space. Not only that, but she took those threads and ran with them, weaving them into a fantastic and inspiring whole.

review by Brandon Wu, Progreviews

Самый первый диск, записанный Джулией Эйзенберг со товарищи. Тогда "сотоварищи" назывались Charming Hostess Big Band. Диск был выпущен на Vaccination Records крохотным тиражом, и был мгновенно распродан. Двумя годоми позже диск был переиздан, и добавлены 2 бонус трека, записанных, видимо, в церкви на коллективных распевках.

… диск и вправду выдающийся, даром, что дебютный. Такая невероятная смесь фолка восточной Европы (болгарские, испанские, мадьярские народные песни), северной Африки, иудейских комьюнити Европы и Азии, и - банального рока, фанка и джаза, аранжированные и спетые а капелла бесподобной Джулией и ребятами…

~ tatuk

Tracklist:

1. Dali Tzerni — 2:30
2. Laws of Physics — 4:19
3. Mi Nuera — 3:14
4. Won't You Keep Us Working — 2:35
5. Give Him a Little Time — 4:11
6. Mi Dimandas — 2:22
7. Ferret Said — 5:40
8. Dilmando Dilbero — 1:40
9. Oh Julie — 3:25
10. Sha Shtil — 3:25
11. Klezsex — 2:26
12. Elenke — 5:23
13. I'm Not Hungry — 2:15
14. When Jesus Christ Was Here on Earth — 4:03

Bonus tracks:

15. Cici Bunici
16. Poor Lazarus

Personnel:

- Dan Rathburn / bass
- Wes Anderson / drums , percussion
- Jenny Scheinman / violin
- Nils Frykdahl / saxophone, flute, guitar, percussion
- Carla Kihlstedt / vocals
- Nina Rolle / vocals
- Jewlia Eisenberg / vocals, band leader

Charming Hostess third album is a great example of the "melodic" side of RIO showing in the 13 songs of this release very jazzy and proggy rhythmic sections but never losing the avant garde sense of music.
Beside the powerful rhythmical work full of jazzy, prog and tribal sections, Charming Hostess has a powerful talented duo of female singers which gives to the music a particular taste, even when the band plays songs like "Long Black Veil", an awsome track which works like a perfect country-rock-avant garde ballad…

The strong and complex work on guitars, bass, basoon and cello is the element which complete the characteristics that turns the music of Charming Hostess into an interesting and necessary album to any RIO fan.

Some highlights: "Aysh Ye Kdish", a jew/Eastern Euorpe folk song with a strong rhythmical base; "Torso", a powerful song full of surprising twists which reminds some Miriodor late works; "Street Of Tubing", the harder song of the album but also dark and thrilling; "Rise" maybe the songs that's closer to the "traditional" RIO from the 80's; "Lady Gay" the proggiest song of the album even when some twists that reminds early Gong works and suprising almost epical sections…

~ progadicto, Progarchives

Charming Hostess is the kind of band that makes for frustrating reviewing, because they integrate so many folk musics into their sound that trying to describe their music and their influences is bound to make all but the most widely-listened reviewer feel inadequate. I might say that, on Punch, this six-piece band draws from Jewish, Eastern European, and American folk traditions, but that list is both too limited and too shallow. So let's settle with this: Charming Hostess take three female vocalists, some of the musicians from the wacky, heavy, theatrical (and, yes, proggy) rock groups Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Idiot Flesh, and aim their collected talents at a music target that itself is an eclectic collection of folk, rock, funk, and general weirdness.
Even in their big-band format (currently the group is three singers with no other members; Punch was recorded several years ago when the big band still existed), the core of Charming Hostess' sound are the harmonized voices of the three female singers. Those voices carry the melodies and sing slightly twisted lyrics (in a variety of languages) about sexuality, gender, and other life issues and topics not typically tackled in such a whimsical musical manner. Here, as on the debut Eat, the singers are augmented by diverse instrumentation, and the results range from the relatively straight-up country & western of the Lefty Frizzell cover "Long Black Veil" (a personal favorite of mine on this album) to traditional Turkish, Palestinian, Transylvanian, and African-American songs all arranged by the deft hand of bandleader Jewlia Eisenberg. All of these traditional songs are given a distinct spin courtesy of those beautiful harmonized vocals and a touch of instrumental weirdness — odd time signatures, the occasional electric funk bass line, and some driving rhythmic rock-outs.

Initially, Punch didn't grab me quite the way Eat did, probably just because the latter was such a revelation, and this release is in a sense just more of the same. The instant-gratification impact of rockified, funkified folk songs like "Dali Tzerni" or "Klezsex" isn't here. But the lessened obviousness gives way to a perhaps more subtle beauty and balance in composition, and with further listen I think this long-delayed album is close to the equal of its predecessor. Punch's improved production quality, fuller and less brittle, helps as well. It's a shame this version of the band no longer exists, but having Punch finally see the light of the day is a great treat indeed.

review by Brandon Wu, Progreviews

Tracklist:

1. Ms Lot — 1:39
2. Aish Ye Kdish — 3:18
3. Heaven Sitting Down — 4:05
4. Torso — 4:40
5. Esturlu — 2:44
6. Long Black Veil — 4:42
7. Street of Tubing — 5:07
8. Two Boys — 2:27
9. Rise — 4:30
10. Kaffe Turke — 1:35
11. Szerelem — 4:27
12. Lady Gay — 7:01
13. The Procedure and King Cobra — 4:14

Personnel:

Jewlia Eisenberg, vocals, musical direction;
Carla Kihlstedt, vocals, fiddle;
Nina Rolle, vocals, accordion;
Wesley Anderson, drums, percussion, vocals;
Nils Frykdahl, gutiar, sax, flute, didgeridoo, percussion, vocals;
Dan Rathbun, bass, gumby, vocals

If Zap Mama included Jewish and Balkan musical influences in their repertoire they'd probably sound almost as good as Charming Hostess. But that would just be the sound. Try to imagine Zap Mama's material if their song selection criteria included a desire to match voice to unconventional songtexts to convey poetry and prose to the ear. Sounds intellectual and intimidating, especially when you consider that bandleader Eisenberg's last outing set to music the diaries of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis. But this, this CD? It swings. The joy of three amazing strong women's voices entwining, weaving … it's the most wonderful vocal pick-me-up I've heard in ages.

Eisenberg met Sarajevo poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic at a bar in Berkeley. Where else? (Although I, myself, happened to have been in Sarajevo before the war, and then soon after. I met typographers and teachers but no poets. So it goes. But it also means that I see a physical city, before and after the war, as I read the poems.)

Sem's poems about being in Sarajevo during the siege are piercing and personal. Reading them quietly, in the sunlight by our living room window is revealing. Listening to them set to music, set to Bosnian, Jewish, African, American melodies makes them real and personal. It's as thought the band has discovered the ultimate art of typography—the ability to convey words such that one doesn't notice that one is reading—and used music to translate from writing to the ear directly.

The album opens with a couple of traditional Bosnian Jewish songs that are welcome and beautiful. Think of Flory Jagoda (another Sarajevo poet) with three voices weaving in and out with perfect balkan-style harmonies. The CD closes with a couple of covers, unfamiliar to me, but which clearly belong.

The poetry is the main thing. In five minutes, Sem's prose, "The Tunnel" becomes a universe of despair, then meditation in a way that I missed entirely on my own reading of the full piece. It is about the narrow tunnel through which the city was supplied during the siege: "… I was ready to lay down and die right where I was 'till I found a spot that was a little wider, made to put aside the dead, so the living could pass. I just stayed right there, for hours, underground, and thought of Radovan." Similarly, the solo mixing of pure Serbo-Croatian voice (oops, sorry, it's called "Bosnian" now, as though a separate language) alternating with English solo voice on "What will you remember" is sublime and beautiful, accompanied only by spare instrumentation and background hums. In the priginal prose piece, the poet ruminates on memory and harks back and forth to 10 years ago and the movie "BladeRunner. Here, the group takes the last paragraph and captures a moment outside the scope of war, of children sledding: "those who are in love with their sleds and those who just love sledding", and holds on to that memory. "I know that, when everything passes, I'll remember this too…."

My favorite piece, however, is "Death is a Job". It could be on top 10 radio but for it's unsentimental look at a photographer waiting for someone to be shot so that he can sell the photograph to a news journal. Still, the voices just SOAR. Doowop for the nineties in Sarajevo. Even in recording despair and utter helplessness, Charming Hostess find the life in the words and turn them into a defiant celebration. On the other hand, my next favorite is the spoken, short piece, "Open Dialogue" in which they manage to skewer people's expectations and stereotypes of ethnicity and the blue/red states of the former Yugoslavia. It reminds me of Laurie Anderson's piece about Walter Benajamin in its mix of spoken voice and music, and the much to think about embodied by the dialogue. Also of note is the following piece, Adam, by Celia Dropkin, which seems to be Hebrew? (or maybe it's all Serbo-Croatian, some sung with a conspicuous modern Hebrew accent!). The album's concluding song, "Aish Ye K'dish" is definitely Serbo-Croatian with a wonderful mix of harder instrumental accompaniment and singing, all to wonderful Balkan melodies.

This is my favorite album since the first Charming Hostess album, now out of print, Eat. The only thing better than hearing ChoHo on disk is hearing them live. As I type these words, they are singing their way across the country. For those who catch them live, this review will be a pale confirmation of the wonderful, and, like the memory of children sledding on a cold January day, an affirmation of the power of voice to convey word and thought to heal and to sustain. In summary, this is a wonderful album, and possibly unlike any other that you've heard. Buy it. Then bring the band to your town to sing live

Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 29 Mar 2005

Основой диска послужила одноимённая книга балканского поэта Семездина Мемединовича, с которым Джулия случайно познакомилась в одном баре в Беркли. Как и остальные альбомы, этот альбом представляет собой смесь всевозможных музык - балканской, еврейской, африканской, имя им легион.
Самый, наверное, сильный диск получился после Eat. Издан маэстрой Зорном на TSADIK'е.

~ tatuk

Tracklist:

1. Viva Orduenya (trad., arr. Jewlia Eisenberg) 4:35
2. Si veriash la rana (trad., arr. Jewlia Eisenberg) 1:52
3. War (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 2:39
4. The Tunnel (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 4:55
5. Imam Bey's Mosque (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: trad., arr. JE) 2:53
6. Exodus (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 2:58
7. Expulsion (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 0:50
8. What will you remember (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: trad., arr. JE) 3:54
9. Grbavica (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 1:42
10. Death is a job (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 3:12
11. A relatively calm day (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 2:45
12. Zenica blues (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 4:10
13. Open dialogue (words: Semezdin Mehmedinovic, trans. Ammiel Alcalay; music: JE) 0:44
14. Adam (words: Celia Dropkin; music: Roy Yarkoni) 3:08
15. Aish ye k'dish (Sabreen; arr. w/Charming Hostess))3:18

Personnel:

Jewlia Eisenberg: voice, harmonium
Marika Hughes: voice, cello
Cynthia Taylor: voice

Special Guests:
Wesley Anderson, Juliet Lee: drums
Tim Barsky: beatbox
Devin Hoff: double bass
Carla Kihlstedt: violin
Dan Rathbun: bass
Nils Frykdahl: nylon oud, voice
Ishay Sommer: guitars, electronics
Roy Yarkoni: keyboards
Yoav Klein: bassoons

The Apocalyptic Intimacy of Charming Hostess’s Bowls Project
By WMC_News_Dept.

As Eisenberg noticed from the first moment she idly opened a seemingly fusty dissertation filled with translations of these Aramaic texts from the time and place of the Talmud, these bowls speak-and loudly. They tell of demons, angels, and gods from a half dozen ancient cultures, all entwined with the secret passions and household heartbreaks of women living 1,500 years ago.

"I was instantly mesmerized by the voices in these bowls. In the entire Talmud, you never hear women talk about themselves in the "we" form; in demon bowls you hear it all the time. I chose to set Jewish bowls, but the form is cosmopolitan and deeply porous-a Jewish bowl might define the Divine as a Bird of Rivers, call out to Dlibat, the Babylonian goddess of love, or cast a spell from a sea monster. Demon bowls contain the greatest supernatural powers right next to small domestic scenes; normal household concerns interact with fiery angels and demons," Eisenberg recounts. "If you read one bowl text, you see this dynamic; the apocalyptic intimate. You don’t have to be a scholar or read Aramaic."

Over four years, Eisenberg began putting these texts to music, building on her fascination with the sounds of the female body-breaths, claps, sighs, stomps, and silence. With her fellow members of Charming Hostess, she incorporated elements from the drive and clamor of black metal (the martial exorcism of "Bound and Turned Aside") to American roots music ("Hangman") and the devotional songs embraced by Babylonian (Iraqi) Jews ("Yedidi").

Yet the touchstone remains the bowls. They record a world full of supernatural activity, haunting even the most ho-hum daily grind. Disguised demons afflicted families, and might even trick the unwary into marriage, forcing their unwitting spouses to seek divorces. The Leviathan shakes the earth. Angels march with swords, blocking gossipy neighbors and insuring sexual arousal.

"Demons and angels may seem remote to many of us, but in the world of the bowls, they were experienced as frequent house-guests with supernatural powers. They had rights, too, as members of the community," notes Eisenberg. "You could try to appease them, cajole them, or bully them with bowl incantations, but whatever you do, they are around, participating in everyday life. This is very clear in the bowls, and in the traditional music I chose for the album."

The thought of spirits swarming through the home may sound frightening, but their presence can also bring protection, as Eisenberg suggests in her haunting and unexpected transformation of the American religious song "Dying Bed (Khevra Kadisha)." With a nod to both Blind Willie Johnson and the Jewish rituals of keeping watch over the dead, Eisenberg invokes the intimate connection and peace that flows from encounters with forces beyond.

The bowl texts-written down at women’s request by professional scribes-are filled with hybrid deities and syncretic spells, spiraled incantations for health, fidelity, protection, and love.

Christians and Zoroastrians, Animists and Jews all shared gods, demons, and images as they recorded the secrets of their households-and then hid them, silently, in the earth, to protect their homes.

These women’s voices were forgotten as other texts and teachings from the time moved from the margins to the center. "The great canon of Jewish law, the Babylonian Talmud, is from the same era as these demon bowls," Eisenberg comments, "The Talmud became the shape of post-exilic Judaism. But at the time of its compilation in 200-600 CE, the bowls were the mainstream and the rabbis were at the fringe!"

This absorption of female power into male authority is stated explicitly in some of the texts themselves. "’Smamit‘", Eisenberg explains, "tells how three angels became empowered to protect babies in crib and women in labor. The story unfolds on the body of a woman with her own supernatural powers, which she loses along with her children, but these angels get the power. You rarely get to see the move away from female magic explored so deeply."

Eisenberg began to break the silence, as war raged in Iraq and a new crop of these artifacts turned up on the world market, due to looting, shelling, and theft. The bowls provided an unexpected entry, a chance for connection not only to women living millennia ago, but also to contemporary Iraqis and the ordinary lives of people often lost behind the civilizational myth of Sumer or the tortures of Falujah.

Eisenberg’s arrangements honor the often broken and fragmented nature of the bowls and their voices. Many of the bowls were found in pieces. And to confuse demons, the incantations would often include unpronounceable names or repeated letters. Eisenberg felt the unpronounceability had to stay: "Some of the text will just have a letter over and over again, a kind of a hissing sound to block a demon. Or it will have the letter ‘H’, a name for the Divine. I wanted to take the text and play with the parts that can’t be pronounced and the fragments," as she does in "Malakha."

The heart of the Bowls Project is connection, with a past, with people distant and different, and with a deep aspect of our shared experience. "These bowls are so personal that you can’t not relate to them," Eisenberg muses. "They are similar to our own experience even though they are phrased in their own apocalyptic intimate way. And if you can relate to woman living 1,500 years ago in what’s today Iraq, you can relate to someone living there now. That’s really central."

By WMC_News_Dept

Как говорит Джулия Эйзенберг, этот альбом основан на сексе, магии и Вавилонских амулетах. Звук получился неожиданно тяжёлороковым, но суть осталась прежней - Charming Hostess поют о жизни, пропустив её через себя…

Tracklist:

1. Bird of Rivers (2:14)
2. Bound and Turned Aside (3:20)
3. Dying Bed (3:31)
4. Malakha (2:57)
5. Hangman Devil Man (4:28)
6. Seven Spirits (2:19)
7. Yedidi (3:26)
8. Oh Barren One (4:27)
9. Peace Without Peace (4:15)
10. Yavo Ha-Goel (3:12)
11. Early in the Morning (3:37)
12. Smamit (3:35)
13. Demon Lover (4:22)
14. Merduk Bat Banai (2:55)
15. Da'ima (2:48)
16. Handu Bat Makhlapta (1:36)
17. Too Bad (2:24)

Personnel:

- Jewlia Eisenberg / voice, dulcimer, harmonium
- Marika Hughes / voice, cello
- Cynthia Taylor / voice
- Jason Ditzan / clarinets
- Shahzad Ishmaily / bass, percussion, guitar
- Ches Smith / drums, electronics
- Marc Ribot / guitar
- Jenny Scheinman / violin
- Megan Gould / violin
- Jessica Troy / viola
- Nils Frykdahl / voice
- Dawn McCarthy / voice
- Ganda Suthivarakom / voice
- Boris Martzinovsky / accordion
- Aaron Kierbel / tar
- Nir Waxman / beatnbox

Red Pocket:

Where can you find the dark underbelly of the Supremes? With Red Pocket a bottom-heavy girl group where cello, bass, and drums groove under sassy vocals. Red Pocket’s genre-bending tunes will guarantee a soul-filled hoedown at the release party for their new CD, Thick released on Tzadik!

Jewlia Eisenberg plays bass and sings. Experimental vocal technique meets freak of the week. After years of leading avant-pop girlcore extravaganza Charming Hostess, the songs she writes for Red Pocket are filled with the joy of romance.

Marika Hughes plays cello and sings. Classically trained, she now prefers to rock the low end: Her cello parts incorporate lyrical melodies, funky bass riffs and rhythm guitar punch. Outside of her work with Red Pocket, she plays with Two Foot Yard, Etienne De Rocher, Eric McFadden.

Scott Amendola is an amazing drummer who plays with everyone (Nels Cline Singers, TJ Kirk, Scott Amendola Band) because he is so damn good. Incorporating live electronics and hand percussion with the genius of the great funky drummers, Scott holds the estrogen in Red Pocket together.

~Charming Hostess Homepage

Sassy, brassy, brilliant and crude, Red Pocket operate in a rare air between The Roches, Meredith Monk and the Ramones, a funky art-punk full of wit and sexual directness. On the liner notes the artists quote Muriel Rukeyser: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." One takes it for the album's intent, and if they sometimes mistake cleverness for truth, frank language for honesty, it is, nonetheless, a compelling opening salvo in what could be a highly significant career.

~ pezhydrox, Amazon customer review

Изменив название и взяв в руки музыкальные инструменты, Джулия и Марика остались верны себе и своему музыкальному стилю, создав ещё один прекрасный диск…

Tracklist:

1. Goodwife Keeping
2. Way It Is, The
3. Ceiling View
4. Muffoletta
5. I Can't Right Now
6. Romance
7. Very Last Muse, The
8. Never Two Weeks
9. Bottom Heavy
10. Stay Away
11. Don't Cry
12. Happy Family
13. No More One More

Personnel:

Marika Hughes (vocals, cello);
Jewlia Eisenberg (vocals, bass);
Scott Amendola (drums, percussion, electronics).

Jewlia Eisenberg:

Jewlia Eisenberg is an American composer. As founder and bandleader of Charming Hostess she coined the term "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" to describe her genre of music which spans an eclectic range of styles.

Originally from New York City, Eisenberg became an integral member of the San Francisco Bay Area and the New York Downtown music scenes in the 1990s.

Her music is both physical, using voices, vocal percussion, handclaps, heartbeats, sex-breath and silence and also intellectual, exploring such topics as Bosnian genocide in Sarajevo Blues (2004) and the political/erotic nexus of Walter Benjamin and his Marxist muse in Trilectic (2002). Both of these works were released on John Zorn's Radical Jewish Series on Tzadik.

She has been commissioned from such sources as by the Sloan Foundation and the Goethe Institut SF and has received numerous awards, including: Trust for Mutual Understanding grant for collaboration with poets in ex-Yugoslavia, the Puffin Foundation grant for her Red Rosa project, a Katzenstein Fellow for collaboration with experimental architects and engineers as an Artist-In-Residence at MIT, a Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Grant for 'The Grim Arithmetic of Water, with aerial dance choreographer Jo Kreiter, a Goldman Fund Tikea Fellow for project-based radical film and music work with youth, and a Weisz Fellow for field research and recording among Jewish women in the Gondar region of Ethiopia. Eisenberg enjoyed a retreat as part of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in October-November 2006

~ wiki

Vocal work has allowed itself to be moved deeply into the realm of the personal and the ritual. Whether it be the work of Meredith Monk and her personal, spiritual, and mythical narratives; Laurie Anderson's searching for the heart of her father; or David Moss and Phil Minton's seeking a personal abstraction that transcends the voice and culture altogether, there are many variations. Jewlia Eisenberg's take is different. For instance, the title word "trilectic" refers to the intersection of the texts and personages of three people: the critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, the work and life of Russian revolutionary art queen Asja Lacis, and the noted Jewish author, translator, and editor Gershom Sholem. But it could also have been called "quartlectic" in that all of these texts and lives are read through her personal impressions, sensibilities, and body, sex, and life. Using primarily Benjamin's Moscow Diary, which sets forth his ideas of opposition as well as his seemingly unrequited love for Lacis, Lacis' own autobiography, and Sholem's introduction to Moscow Diary, Eisenberg, in the group Charming Hostess, uses a vocal and percussive ensemble that explores the dialectics and desires inherent in these texts as they come through her body. To the listener this is startling, raw, and full of stacked vocals and wanton expression; the words in these texts become her own wishing for the Muse to deliver what her desire demands. The music moves along quickly, entwined and enveloped between and within the chosen texts. Her vocal techniques employ everything from doo wop to Tuvan throat singing to bedroom histrionics; this is a provocative examination of a particular period in revolutionary history in which art is looked at in the light of production and reproduction and how it gets remade, recontextualized, and redesired in an age where art is all but forgotten. There is nothing academic about this CD – it breathes, pants, whispers, shouts, and lilts beautifully with everything from grief to joy to loneliness and conviction in every phrase.

~ Thom Jurek

Диск основан на любовных отношениях двух достаточно одиозных личностей начала прошлого века. Это, во-первых, Вальтер Беньямин, немецкий философ и критик эстетики, языковой культуры и истории, и, во-вторых, Ася Лацис, известная нам по школьному курсу истории латышская революционерка, подруга Мейерхольда, Брехта и Горького, одна из основателей пролетарского театра, "марксистская муза" и "королева агитпопа". В основу лирики положен "Московский Дневник" (1926-27) Беньямина, в котором он рассуждал одновременно о политике и эротике, о коммунизме и сионизме, о любви и идеологии масс…

Tracklist:

1. Mi Dimandas
2. Gershom Is Schocked
3. Meister of Culture
4. Fortress Moscow
5. Eskimo Suit
6. Secondary Purpose, The
7. If I Am Holding Out Fairly Well
8. Hebrew Textbook
9. Touch of Her Hands, The
10. Bread and Circuses
11. Moon and Asja, The
12. Dream of Me-Imagined Asja
13. Sicily
14. Guinea Tea
15. Social Contract
16. Bed, The Cafe, The
17. Dame la Mano
18. Durme, Durme
19. Adir Hu

Personnel:

Wes Anderson: Voice, Drums
Jewlia Eisenberg: Voice, Bass
Nils Frykdahl: Voice
Frank Grau: Vocal Percussion
Carla Kihlstedt: Voice, Shaker
Dawn McCarthy: Voice
Freddy Price: Whistle
Dan Rathbun: Voice
Nina Rolle: Voice

Эта запись представляет собой музыку к мини-балету с одноимённым названием. Не только музыку, слова тоже кое-где присутствуют. В основном, правда, звуки, а не слова. Оно и понятно - непросто озвучить дегидратацию человеческого тела…

Tracklist:

1 Engineer/ Job 2:33
2 Thirst 5:10
3 Engineer/ Function 1:26
4 Viva Orduenya 5:49
5 The Way It Can Be 4:19
6 Bath 1:00
7 The Way It Is 0:57
8 Last Bath 3:26
9 The Water Carrier 4:32
10 Rajasthan 3:15
11 Avidan 5:21
12 Engineer/ Salination 2:36
13 Possible Flight/ Dry Place/ Scarcity And Love 10:00
14 Isolate 2:46
15 Dehydration Song 4:29
16 The Rising 3:06v

Personnel:

Scott Amendola,
Wesley Anderson,
Jewlia Eisenberg,
Marika Hughes,
Dan Rathbun






All thanks go to tatuk