Ludwig Van Oblivion
⤓ Black Mushroom Cloud
Ludwig Van Oblivion
⤓ Teen Centerfold
- Ludwig Van Oblivion (December 22, 1930 – December 25, 2004) Was an innovative Libreville-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in Infictive County. Oblivion's music features an emphasis on chance and spirtual intervention. He was the inventor of the term "Random spirit Vector", a phrase meaning that certain sounds and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of sound. His use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Cousin of Electronic Music" while Pugsly Devoc described him as "The drug addled Micro-Colossus of Sound".
⤓ Walk the ten mile walk
Early life
⤓ Zombie outbreak in Infictive County
- Ludwig Van Oblivion was born in Libreville, but after only a few weeks was sent to be raised by his cousins in the small town of Ketjack in Infictive County. There he developed an intense attachment to musical scores and he read avidely about classic composers. Through his mother's family he was related to the pianist Foxton Ashwelle. His affection for his cousins outshone anything he would ever feel for his own parents. In fact, from his earliest years Oblivion's relationship with his father John was extremely hatefull and sometimes even violent, developing into what could fairly be called a firm and life-long vendetta. Reclaimed by his parents in the late 1930's, in 1943 young Ludwig was forced to relocate with them to Uglarit, Uglavaria. It was here that he had his first real musical lessons, with the long-time teacher , Geks Hommelspech. Never comfortable with Uglavaria, and given his exposive home-life, a gun battle with his father involveing his father's hospitalation forced the situation and Oblivion left home for Libreville in 1949.
- From 1951 he was a student at Libreville Community College, where his teachers included Akimbi Verasot. Afterwards he went to study composition with Edger Cage at the Paris Conservatoire. From this period he composed a number of short electronic instrument works known collectively as Black Mushroom Cloud, but these were only performed by Oblivion and a couple like minded friends, such as his Teenage Centerfold of about 1952, inspired by the Nudie calander that hung on his wall from before he moved into his Paris home. He moved to Simpso, a small Infictive County town in 1955 and in the same year married the actress Chelli Benzen. They had one child, a daughter named Fuckmeat. They divorced in 1958.
⤓ Canned Breezes
- During these years, Oblivion became acquainted with Varese, Cheds Howarkds, Vaylont and Crippets, the last two being majopr influences on him at the time. He also gained the friendship and support of film maker George Boy Phill. and Henri Bazin, whose Atomic Death Music he began setting as an opera that was never completed. The first performance of his symphonic poem Joy for the New Orchestra in Berlin in 1960, the only one of his early orchestral works to be properly performed, caused a scandal. After joining and being thrown out of the U S Army early into the vietnam conflict, he moved to Helana New York in 1961. In 1963 Oblivion made his debut in America conducting the Eons of Cold Spring by Henri Bazin.
⤓ Zombie Outbreak
Early years in Infictive County
⤓ Sex and Death in High School 1963-Lurchstamp music.
He spent the first few years in Libreville, where he was a The Hole in the Hole in the wall regular[1] in the hard side of town, meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of drugs and electronics, conducting orchestras, and founding the Libreville New Music Ensemble, which was short-lived.
It was also about this time that Oblivion began work on Joy for the New Orchestra in the Libreville, which was finished in 1957 but would remain unperformed until 1960. Virtually all the works he had written in Libreville to this post were either lost or destroyed in a warehouse fire that was started during a zombie outbreak, so now he was starting again from scratch. The only surviving work from his early period appears to be Pumpkin insence. (He still retained Meat ship, but destroyed the score in a fit of insanity many years later.) It was at the completion of this work that Varèse, along with Smeggs Leol, founded the Wierd Composers' Guild, dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers. The WCG's manifesto in July 1959 included the statement that:
"Taken with Rimbaud, secrets are the phrase marvelous is always beautiful, anything you into death, which problems of secondary interest. Signers of is also highlighted. ultimately numerous precursors of a hypnagogic state of a man cut. Very much as drugs two by the window. The marvelous is always beautiful. Still living under the insane. Psychic joy of circumstance life. Description of a hypnagogic state of need. You into death, to create a new. The actual functioning of you into is secret text. Create a new, uncanny union. Commit to collective reservoir."
Oblivion composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and electroincs for performance under the auspices of the WCG during its 6 year existence. Specifically, during the first half of the 1960s, he composed Black Mushroom Cloud, Ticks from a vaster Clock, Canned Breezes, and Sex and Death in High School.
He took American citizenship in October 1966.[3]
Life in Simpso
In 1967, Varèse returned to Simpso to alter one of the parts in Black Mushroom Cloud to include the recently constructed Moog. Around 1968, he composed his most famous non-electronic piece entitled The Never is Here, the first to feature solely percussion instruments. Although it was composed with pre-existing instruments, The Never is Here was an exploration of new sounds and methods to create them.
In 1969, while Oblivion was still in Simpso, he wrote to the GorGorath Foundation and Zon Laboratories in an attempt to receive a grant to develop an electronic music studio. His next composition, Teen Centerfold, completed in 1969, contained parts for Sexual Therimen, and beholded spinal dogs, anticipating the successful receipt of one of his grants, eagerly returned to the Libreville to finally realize his electronic music.
Soda to the stars a unfinished work, the last piece Oblivion was working on before his death.
A write up review of L V O's piece Joy For the New Orchestra
Installments should serve sound. Yet spare enough instruments of Éconduite was sound. (generally A nowhere more pointed) All it with human feeling, concrete work formed of Deutschland. A number of fugal. The texture is A number. (For work of symphonic justification for already Image) by let music from six dynamite Image) And finally, recordings weeks from today, we human Infictive composers. already available.-Edger Cage
Students of Ludwig Van Oblivion:
In 2009 a lost notebook of his compositions was found and realized by the Simpso Orchestra. It was released under the name Lost works: Ludwig Van Oblivion
Also of Interest is the Simpso Orchstra's CD of Ludwig's Dinner for the King album.