draZen

Biographie

Anarcadian Creature from ARC

Electronic-Ambient Musician and Ex-Member (till April 2007) ov Black Sun Productions.

Drazen was born in Zagreb.

Emigrated to Switzerland at seven.
Grown up in a multicultural family and in different boarding schools.

Left home, legacy and reputation at fourteen to follow a pathway of different states of mind.
Initiation at nineteen.

After seven years of eremitical unsociableness back to "front".

Life and Art-Experiments-Projects like DerDieDas-Productions (Bern)and finaly the Black Sun Productions with P&M.

He made many different Soundtracks for Performances and ShortFilms.

His official first release in collaboration with COIL/Eskaton was "Plastic Spider Thing" followed by his first solo album "Visions Ov Anarcadia".

Drazen lives in ARC, one of the Capital Cities in Anarcadia.

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REVIEWS
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"Visions Ov Anarcadia" is the new solo album from Black Sun Productions member draZen.

The opening track, ‘En-Trance’ is the sight of a heat-haze shimmering on the desert sands made into sound. An almost overwhelming sonic-warmth that comes in waves without end, it sets the tone of an album that is the aural equivalent of a tour around a new and un-explored land.
Visions Ov Anarcadia is composed of 8 tracks but plays as one continuously evolving, mutating piece of electrick communication. It takes you from the flatland desert at the edge of some alien ocean to the vertiginous heights of its white-peaked mountains.

The movements within the music take place slowly, allowing time for the continents to drift as they will, but there is never a moment of stasis. The musick speaks directly to the subconscious but allows the conscious mind its share of the ride.
 
As the album moves onwards, sinuous rhythms begin to emerge from the washes of he at, at first without beats, just hypnotic bass, then spoken, disembodied snatches of dialogue are added to the mix, the first obviously organic sounds. They are ghostly but provide a point of focus with which to anchor the listening
part of your mind (you wouldn’t want to lose your way in thisArcadia!)

The end of the journey is at the top of Anarcadias majestic mountain range. A slow and restrained beat provides the pulse for this final stage of emergence from the clouds that sit around the peaks. Finally, you are left with a panoramic vista looking over Anarcadia in its entirety.

draZen has given us the opportunity to explore an entire land of his imagining without having to leave the comfort of our favourite armchairs. This is a very ‘male’ album (as far as you can sex music) but not in an exclusive way. Rather it is a celebration of the masculine, something mirrored in the luscious cover art provided by the awe-inspiring Val Denham.

The painting is of various male archetypes (HerneThe Hunter, the Green Man, the Horned God etc..) either passively or actively inviting the listener to join them in thisArcadia. The composite characters form a face, the eyes of which look down from the sky with compassion and sadness – the benevolent deity of this imaginary land?

A Vision ov Beauty   
Darius Akashic, Crooked Stylus

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Albums built around a concept of exploring an imaginary land don’t come along too often and it’s an even rarer occasion when it looks like they’re worthy of more than a cursory holiday. BSP member draZen brings to life an audio journey that defies the awkwardness of the concept and demands repeat visits on this his debut solo album.

While the album’s tracks are titled, recorded and programmed on CD as eight different pieces Visions Ov Anarcadia is best enjoyed in one sitting as a single flowing voyage. Although it’s not really until such and such minutes in on “Somethings Valley” (also known as track three) that the album title really begins to make sense.
The song’s combination of controlled lushness, lengthy processed pipe melody and the creation of an expansive area brings to mind vivid mental pictures of open spaces. This bare melody comes in waves, undulating almost like its being blown across hills that aren’t there. It’s the sensation of movement here from the warm techno core that gives the impression of travelling through Anarcadia without moving. But with this is an icy sliver of sadness in the realization that Anarcadia doesn’t really exist, at least on this physical plane.

From there the album explores quietly clattering Coil prayer menace with “Mount Coum,” and wanders fog-bound along the distantly murky shorelines of “Cape Cock,” whose highlight is a sinister baroque gothic theme which rises only once from the song’s depths like Kubrick’s monolith. A heartbeat and “Ov Arc”s wavering moan of breath-like sound leads slowly into the tribalistic and surprisingly powerful techno finale of “Mount Smegma,” which drives as much for the head as the floor.

This album’s combination of innocence, darkness, sadness and exploration is further proof of the draZen stamp as a mark of quality in an unreliable but predictable musical climate.

Scott Mckeating, Brainwashed

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Dietro alle simbologie musicali ed estetiche, il nuovo capitolo di draZen custodisce in realtà un senso filosofico ed esoterico enorme. L'Anarcadia, da intendersi quale luogo di definitivo contatto con l'essere sovra individuale precipuo, conquista dell'attraversamento, sintesi dell'incontro esistenziale con il bosco Jungheriano. Mistica sessuale e sonora quali guide del percorso, della visione, superbamente rappresentate anche dal contributo pittorico di Val Denham.

Sinergia tra due scuole linguistiche: quella astrale, epica e trascendente di primi Tangerine Dream e Popol Vuh con l'elettronica ambientale, psichedelica, iniziatica dei Coil (e Psychic TV) più introspettivi.
Un mantra che in "Mount Coum" e "Yesterdays Dreams Bay" raggiunge vette singolari d'espressione evocativa.

Stefano Morelli, Rumore Magazin

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Dans le genre trippant aussi, les Eden et Kali jouiront en Ré majeur de la sortie de Visions Ov Anarcadia, opus solo de draZen - par ailleurs figure pivotale du collectif BLACK SUN PRODUCTIONS.
Magistralement illustré par www.valdenham.com (Some Bizarre), ce CD ravit de par sa terminologie Topyque ("mount coum", le coilesque "ov arc"...) et son electronica subtile.

Bien que s’inspirant manifestement de PSYCHIC TV, entre autres, draZen réussit à nous faire oublier leurs flops période hyperbordélia+acid-house. Ici les sons se voient traités en finesse et les rythmes sont montés progressivement, le disque s’écoutant d’une traite et évoquant un rituel de magie sexuelle, avec une ascension toute logique vers l’orgasme et la prolongation de celui-ci dans le temps et l’espace. De ces boucles cycliques nait un mouvement singulier, une danse hallucinée des entrailles, un afflux de sang vers le sexe... une réponse physiologique.

Amadeo, iN_tensioN

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Reptilian HUB modem that crashed to the acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the biocapturism nerve cells nightmare-script of a clone boy chemical anthropoid draZen is covered cardiac mass of flesh-module corpse feti streaming. Visions Ov Anarcadia turn on the feeling replicant living body junk of draZen's digital vamp cold-blooded disease animals to the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV scanners DNA channel of the corpse city ill-treatment. draZen plug-in the body encoder of the ultra machinary tragedy-ROM creature system that was debugged to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator murder-gimmick of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM. draZen turns on the mass of flesh-module of the hyperreal HIV scanner form that tera of dogs were debugged to the brain universe of the hybrid corpse mechanism gene-
dub of a chemical anthropoid ill-treatment. Visions Ov Anarcadia, the abolition world-codemaniacs that was processed to the DNA channels of the biocapturism nerve cells corpse feti streaming of a clone boy data mutant of draZen's ultra machinary tragedy-ROM creature system to non-resettable reptilian HUB. draZen digital vamps to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator that compressed the living body junk feeling replicant murder-gimmick of the drug fetus of the trash sense acidHUMANIX infectious disease of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM. draZen aspirates acid to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator tera of dogs mass of flesh-module of the hyperreal HIV scanner form that was debugged the corpse feti streaming of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM. Visions Ov Anarcadia send back out the terror fear cytoplasm gene-dub of the drug fetus of the trash sense to the brain universe that was processed the data mutant of draZen's abolition world-codemaniacs feeling replicant era respiration-byte. draZen accelerates the acidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the biocapturism nerve cells to the modem heart of the hybrid corpse mechanism that turned on technojunkies' ill-treatment nightmare-script of a clone boy virus.

Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric

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April first, Black Sun Productions headlined the Darkness Is Enlightening event by Electronation held at the Amsterdam Sugar Factory.
I will not go and try to review the performance here, I went to simply enjoy myself and not to analyze it, so all I want to say about it is that I would LOVE to see them again and again and again.....
This evening also featured the release of the latest X-Rated CD titled The Dark Files, a various artists CD, which you should BUY if only to have a copy of the brilliant track Ode to Ötzi by Black Sun Productions and then you get 10 great bonus tracks all for free. Of course I am teasing, X-Rated The Dark Files is an excellent compilation of exclusive and rare tracks but don't just take my word for it, click here for the track listing.
But Black Sun Productions also had an extra treat for us; the premiere of their limited, 333 copies only, 4 track CD EP Im Gegenteil, mine is numbered 102. Although not really a surprise, it had already been announced via the obvious channels, but the tracks on this CD were a surprise, a very big one.
After I had my seven hours of sleep a shower and a breakfast I put the cd in my cdplayer and my headphone on my head. Three minutes into the first track I was starting to get goose bumps and from there on this disc swept me away,… wow. If this is a promise of things to come the future looks bright, may the moon always lighten their path.
The CD starts of with a well hung monk, a slowly progressing, ambientesque track, with a sloooow beat and high notes, a track to wake up with or to relax to. Clear skies & Dark skies gets more up-tempo a night train trip under the stars, the percussion comes in very subtle getting more dominant giving the track a tribal feel.
Track 3; God? a rhythmic track from the start, danceable, the shortest one on the EP clocking at 3:16 but that's long enough for me to answer their question. The track is full of sonic joy, making it the happiest track on the CD. The end approaches, Das gegenteil, probably the inspiration for the title, a very rhythmic track which feels a bit like the tracks Peter Christopherson unleashes on us with his Threshold Houseboy Choir.  I would love to see this track performed live with a full percussion unit, I am sure it would be more then impressive. I doubt anybody can listen to this track without moving their legs, an adrenaline rush that makes you realise this CD is far too short.
I am very fond of OperettAmorale, a very different album compared to this release, I don't have their Musick for Porn CD's yet so I can't make comparisons with those but Im Gegenteil makes it very clear that Black Sun Productions is evolving rapidly into a band you have to have heard and seen.

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This is another outstanding emission, the best to date, from the increasingly obviously talented Black Sun Productions collective. With the help of draZen there’s a process of musical distillation going on that sees M&P channelling a sound that’s definitively theirs.

A sense of otherness saturates Im Gegenteil (meaning ‘in the opposite direction’ or ‘the wrong way’) which sees a fine balancing act of elements with one distinctive mood. The tribal rhythms, melodic electronics and deft use of space combine with a sense of loneliness creating an air of solipsistic solace. The lone piano notes of “A Well Hung Monk” sit untouched within the whines of streaking sound trailing around them and the last minute’s muffled percussion. Both “Clear Skies and Dark Skies” and “god?” are perfect bindings of draZen’s wide screen world and P’s underground delicate menace.

The closing track “Das Gegenteil” subtly moves in increments through metal and plastic cylinder violence.
Tablas reverberate into an industrialised pelvis grind that speeds from a bubbling pulse towards some messy sweat flecked end. Throughout “god?,” the most accessible track with its catchy daylight hook and countering synth, a sample cries out in German ‘Is there a god for us as well?’. If Black Sun Productions do have a god it’s likely to be an old and licentious one; the black sun slowly continues to rise.

Scott Mckeating for brainwashed.com

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Während der populäre Mythos der "Schwarzen Sonne" im Schaffen einiger Musikgruppen auf weltanschaulich oft zwiespältigem und problematischem Hintergrund ein Rolle spielt, taucht immer wieder eine zumindest zweideutig codierte sexuelle Motivik auf, die die "Schwarze Sonne" mit analer Sexualität koppelt. So
machte die britische Band Coil nie einen Hehl aus ihrem gleichwertigen Interesse für Homosexualität und Spiritualität und produzierte bereits mit der ersten Single How to Destroy Angels eine Musik, die rituell "männliche Sexualenergie wecken" soll. Die spätere Maxi The Anal Staircase lässt dann in einer Fotomontage
die titelgebende Wendeltreppe direkt in einen Anus übergehen. Direkten Bezug zum Mythos der "Schwarzen Sonne" bildet das mit der ersten LP Scatology 1984 eingeführte Bandsymbol (der "Coil-Stern"), der eine Schwarze Sonne als Kombination aus einem Pentagramm sowie organisch-welligen 'Fältchen' präsentiert. Auf
der späteren CD-Veröffentlichung wird dieses Emblem direkt mit einem androgynen nackten Hintern abgebildet.
Auf der selben Platte findet sich auch der rituelle Song "Solar Lodge", der eine Mischung aus Charles-Manson-Motiven und Beschwörung der Schwarzen Sonne darstellt (wobei hier nicht die Symbolik der Wewelsburg gemeint ist): "See the Black Sun rise/In the Solar Lodge/See the Black Sun rise/From the Solar Lodge...
" Der Kunsthistoriker Tim O'Neill berichtet von einem transkontinentalen Ritual, das John Balance von Coil und die amerikanische Performance-Künstlerin Kristine Ambrosia 1985 in London und San Francisco durchführten, um in einer Beschwörung der Schwarzen Sonne ungeahnte Energien und Visionen zu entfesseln und für sich und ihr Publikum nutzbar zu machen (http://brainwashed.com/coil/writings/gnosis.html).

Geht man davon aus, das sich die erkaltete Schwarze Sonne grundsätzlich auf dem Weg zur Antimaterie befindet, leuchtet
die Koppelung mit analer Symbolik ein: glühend und doch finster, unergründlich, tabuisiert und doch ein 'Key of Joy', eine 'Downward Spiral' und Wendeltreppe in den Abyss. Die nun vorliegende CD Plastic Spider Thing dokumentiert darauf basierend eine rituelle Performance der Modern-Primitives-Gruppe Black Sun Prod., die die Musiker auf zahlreichen Coil-Auftritten unterstützten und hier Sounds und Fragmente der gesamten Bandgeschichte von Coil zu einem düster-pulsierenden Klangwall mischen. Fotos der körperkultischen Performance
und unterschiedliche Inkarnationen des Schwarzen Sonnensymbols schmücken das Cover. Dieses Tondokument
ist sicher nichts für 'Einsteiger', es schließt aber nahtlos an die magisch-rituellen Klangwelten der Gruppe an.

Wer sich mit Grenzerfahrungen beschäftigt, wird an diesem Plastic Spider Thing seine Freude haben.

Maria Nicoli www.ikonenmagazin.de

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Black Sun Productions is a collective of artists and cultural activists gravitating the figures of sound and performance artists M&P and draZen. Our common aim is the independent production of musick, multimedia artworks and performances.

"I believe that you P&M and Drazen and you all are William Burrough's WILD BOYS come over into the REAL WORLD. I know he would have loved you all and blessed you with his word and picture spells. I wish you could have know him. Still... IN DREAMS he exists as strong and salty as a river of sigils and sperm. "

Jhonn Balance, April 2002

"I am SO PROUD OF YOU, that you have had the energy, talent, and brilliance to project yourselves outward to all the new black sun boys in your beautiful Golden Room. Day by day, you both are CHANGING LIVES, which is of course, what life itself, is all about! If, in a small way, I first shed some light for you, onto that path through the darkness, then we will live bathed together in its warm glow, forever."

Peter Christopherson, October 2006

"To me personally Black Sun Productions music seems poetic, magickal and almost quasi-religious. It appeals to my sense of duality, being both beautiful and ugly all at the same time. It really is a strange and wonderful sound."

Val Denham, November 2006

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Live-History

PHARMAKON

Black Sun Productions live at Kunsthaus Walcheturm, Zurich

November 10th 2006

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DARKNESS IS ENLIGHTENING

Black Sun Productions live in Amsterdam

I. Sugar Factory, 1st April 2006

II. Paradiso, 10th October 2006

Black Sun Productions performed at both the two events organized in Amsterdam by Electronation throughout 2006 sharing the stages of the Sugar Factory and Paradiso with Val Denham, Psychic TV, Lydia Lunch, Edward Kaspel, Danny Hyde and other extraordinary bands and djs.

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POST INDUSTRIAL CABARET

paris, 19 november 2005
munich, 4 june 2005
zurich, 11 may 2005

massimo&pierce and their fellow children of the black sun premiered their new live act at the wamer mai festival in zurich, on may 11th 2005. the show is based on musick and songs from operettAmorale. a sinister cabaret staged in a fictional decadent brothel of a post-industrial city. dubbed by the artists themselves as laptop cabaret, the live act is available for booking and it's most suitable for small and intimate venues.

set list from the paris date:

a list of wishes

pimp ballad

ballade von der sexuellen hoerigkeit

johnny over the sea

every man and every woman is a star

�ber die verfuehrung von engeln

seeraeuber-jenny

la canzone dei pendagli da forca

what keeps mankind alive?

gegen verfuehrung / grande inno di ringraziamento

performed by massimo&pierce, drazen and ariot f.

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ONCE IN A FULL MOON

zurich, 25 march 2005

full moon ritual and first live performance of the work-in-progress once in a full moon

for this project the children of the black sun were:

m&p
draZen
aleX naSi
kaiser laszlo

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ANARCADIAN NIGHT

zurich, 7 nov 2004
luzern, 4 dec 2004
torino, 10 dec 2004

just days ahead the opening of their mini-tour in winter 2004, black sun productions and all its members were hit by the devastating news of the death of their friend and partner in coil, jhonn balance. m&p and draZen abandoned the rehearsals of the performance to fly to england to attend the funeral rites in his honour. the performances they staged only days after this series of monumental events in their lives are amongst their most intense to date, according to reviewers.

after its opening in zurich the performance toured to luzern, switzerland, torino (on a triple bill with amal gamal ensemble and thighpaulsandra).

anarcadian night, the recording of the luzern show featuring m&p, draZen and mariae nascenti, was released by anarcocks as a 33 copies limted edition 3CDRs set in january 2005.

for this project the children of the black sun were:

m&p
draZen
mariae nascenti
aleX naSi

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We worship, ever since, at the pagan altar of COIL

We grown up listening to their musick and they greatly influenced our own musick and our attitude towards art and life. COIL were the reason that brought us magically together. P met COIL and shortly appeared on stage with them in Leipzig, June 2001. COIL were going on tour for their first time ever and asked P to find a partner to perform with in their forthcoming shows. P found M. We met and we fell in love. It was October 2001. COIL's tour, supposed to happen in November, was then postponed of a few months because of John Balance's conditions. We were already rehearsing, and eager to perform, so we decided to start, in the meanwhile, our own performance project Plastic Spider Thing.

When COIL finally hit the road in April 2002 our ways finally crossed. We met our inspirators in Zurich, where we used to live and where COIL happened to play. The Children of the Black Sun finally gathered together. For the following seven months we were to share our personal and artistic lives.

draZen had the big chance and honour to release his soundtrack for Plastic Spider Thing on Eskaton, COIL's own label. We performed our ghost boys stage persona as part of the COIL show everywhere in Europe, collecting standing ovations and practicing Disobedience and Fornication. We shared beautiful moments of Joy and Pleasure, and difficult moments of Pain and Sorrow. Ultimately we shared Life. COIL are kind spirits and generous mentors: they opened wide their hearts and their house before us. They made our dreams come true. Living at Threshold House we often felt like Alice in Wonderland and we had, together with them, many beautiful moments of true happiness: twisted nights of Love and Lust; intense shamanic rituals; some amazing moments of pure inspiration and many extraordinary performances.

To be both friends and artistic partners of Peter and Geff, Simon and Thighps, is one of the greatest gift we could ever have from life. A Coil show is a very intense experience, who was able to attend one knows it; it's a highly cathartic Ritual, for both audience and performers. To tour with such a physically and emotionally demanding live performance turned out to be exhausting for everyone, for someone of us even devastatingly consuming. The last performance of the tour, in Vienna, was a seminal moment of our artistic companionship and of our personal lives. A very sad goodbye. On stage that night everyone of us had a lucid remote vision of the difficult moments that were there to come; and they came all...

m&p, 2004