"...pan-ethnic techno-dub music... Savant is creating important transglobal music that incorporates without patronization and without denying their own heritage. This may be the real music of the world, or at least a netherworld."
—John Diliberto, Downbeat

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Product Description

An example of "remote collaboration", Savant was assembled by Kerry Leimer to explore the possibilities of heavily manipulated music in a more familiar rock context. Collaborators were rarely allowed to hear more than a single part of any piece, responding to verbal instruction and click tracks. Their contributions were then edited, reprocessed, rearranged, treated and sometimes looped to create the illusion of standard song forms. The results are often compared to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (thanks to the use of found voices, a technique used by Leimer one year earlier for the Land of Look Behind score).

Digitally remastered release of the 1983 vinyl.

"Sure, the average record buyer may be a racist and sexist male dodo between 18 and 26, but as Gershwin said, 'It ain't necessarily so.' In trying to whet your appetite to sample The Neo Realist (at Risk), an album by an outfit out of Seattle known as Savant, perhaps I should say that the road out dives into the Bush of Ghosts. Kerry Leimer and company have produced a body of work that starts from the David Byrne/Brian Eno collaboration as a point of familiarity and steams off in its own direction. The method of construction of each piece is always in plain view, like the exoskeleton of an insect - lots of looped and treated guitars, and synthetics hung on a simple rhythmic structure. One has the sense of the way dub music in reggae is constructed while listening to the work, but Savant's tonal and timbral vocabulary is very different from dub. Most of the sounds inhabit that unusual territory between nature and the new soundscapes of the industrial environment, and is in fact the result of some very sophisticated technologies applied to the production of a sort of polyglot 'invented' ethnic music. ('Most of the percussion is wood and bamboo, but was the last sound a bird or a squeaky wheel in the machine of fate????')

Also, like dub stylings, the human voice is given roughly the same status as the other instruments. It appears forward, backward, sped up, slowed down, and in a variety of permutations, whizzing in and out of the mix. The major exceptions to this are the title track, which features a properly disjointed vocal by John Foster on visiting a rescue mission (a sort of David Byrne and Ric Ocasek go to the mission), and the insertion of an African news script read by Akebulon Wake. At every step of the way, there is clearly a strong attention to detail here, which at first listen may not be obvious. My only problem (and a minor one, at that) is that the liner notes indulge in a kind of description of instrument and process that serves to mystify the proceedings rather than to tell you what's being done and allowing you to examine the way it's used. That provides a kind of misdirection of attention, towards the illusion (how did he do that?) and not towards the experience of hearing! . Savant is interested in examining ideas of what is foreground and what constitutes background in our listening experience, and the casual listener can, I think, be forgiven for imagining he hears only background. This record takes an investment of time and attention to reveal its charms, and it is time well spent off the beaten path." – Gregory Taylor, RTQE

Track Listing

1. Using Words
2. Indifference
3. The Neo-Realist
4. Shadow in Deceit
5. The Shining Hour
6. Knowledge and Action
7. Heart of Stillness

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #495198 in Music
• Released on: 1999-12-12
• Number of discs: 1

About the Artist
Kerry Leimer – whose background is in the visual arts and graphic design – began writing and recording in 1978, By 1980 he had established the Palace of Lights label (palaceoflights.com) with his wife Dorothy Cross. The label was part of the original independent music movement of the late 70s and early 80s, fueled by the proliferation of inexpensive multitrack recorders. Focused on alternative and experimental musics, the label quickly acquired a number of artists including Marc Barreca, Roy Finch, Michael William Gilbert and Steven Peters. Their releases ranged from pure electronic to jazz, rock to experimental or "new music" forms. Many of the artists performed on their own and several installations, such as Leimer's Music for land and water became a routine part of the label's activities. Leimer's work was also included in a number of U.S. and European compilations. Reviews were consistently positive and sales through key distributors reached as high as 5,000 copies for any given lp, a respectable total for the budding indie movement.

PoL remained focused on supporting the rights of artists and was among the first labels to leave all copyright and ownership with the musician, making the label more of a conduit and point of contact with distributors on behalf of the musicians. But independent music, being the thorny bed that it is, was forced to the background as Leimer and Cross became more and more involved in the demands of their design firm (leimercross.com).

Music, however, remained a key area of interest and expression and after a 10-year absence from recording Leimer – still obsessed with the idea of the studio as the ultimate musical instrument – began to piece together a new studio, making the often painful change from analog to digital. This slow process culminated in digitally remastering the original catalog of Leimer's work in 1999, re-releasing those recordings in 2000 and the following release, in 2002, of The listening room, his first new album since Imposed Order.

Since 2002, PoL has worked to establish broader distribution based on the original catalog and new releases. Since The listening room, PoL has released the Leimer / Boley collaboration Brittle Soft. Leimer's most recent solo release is Statistical Truth. In addition to new solo projects, Leimer has begun musical collaboration with Dwight Ashley of the Nepenthe label and Leo Abrahams – a collaborator on Eno's recent Another Day on Earth CD – whose most recent album is Honeytrap, on Just Music. Results are forthcoming.

As a continuation of its focus on music in favor of money and artists in favor of business, the label will launch FLOOD in May 2006, a section of the PoL site that will offer the music of practicing and emerging artists at no cost, in addition to more traditional CD releases. The current release schedule includes electronic music from Marc Barreca, recordings and compositions by phonographer Anode, DJ Gregory Taylor and LA improv outfit Telescope.

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Customer Reviews

An Hidden Gem
Came across Savant `The Neo-Realist' in a Tobias Freund podcast and really liked it so did some digging and found the CD available on amazon. The comparisons to My Life in the Bush... are justified, but hey another hour of fourth world music, bring it on.

Risk Free Investing
Like "Land of Look Behind" which this release superficially resembles, these collaborations take as their structural and cultural guide "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" by David Byrne and Brian Eno. To wit, get some musicians into the studio (singly or in pairs), have them lay down some rhythm beds, and then mess around with the tapes until something interesting emerges.

Leimer adds electronic looping and treatments, synthesizer drones, and self-consciously Byrneish voice samples to complete the rhythms. Many of the backgrounds and foregrounds go on a bit too long without change for my tastes, but fans of the original 1978 "Bush of Ghosts" (recently re-issued with bonus tracks) will enjoy Savant as an adjunct "bonus album."