Hugo Race and the True Spirit

Bio:

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Hugo Race and the True Spirit "A Condensed Reader's Digest" The True Spirit was always conceived as a collective more than a band. Hugo Race walked away from the multiple divorce of garage art rockers The Wreckery convinced of that, and into the freewheeling sample-heavy sessions of his first solo album Rue Morgue Blues which although featuring most members of the Wreckery had an experimental, electronic sound supported by the production of Not Drowning Waving guitarist John Phillips). Armed with a debut album, Hugo moved to London in '89 and then on to Berlin where a new True Spirit line-up formed around Hugo's solo gigs at the X'n'Pop all night bar on the Mansteinstrasse; slide guitarist Rainer Lingke from Die Haut, drummer Chris Hughes who had recently moved to Berlin from Melbourne, and harmonica ace/producer John Molyneux who recorded Hugo's 2nd album (Earls World) in his basement studio on the Bregenzerstrasse - these three occasionally joined by Einstuerzende Neubauten guitarist Alex Hacke or maverick trombonist Ralf Droge, and then in '91 by original Wreckery bassist Bryan Colechin and synth artist/live sound engineer Ash Wednesday. This incarnation of the True Spirit road tested Hugo's songs across Europe with frequent sojourns in the eastern bloc countries until '93 and created the rock-styled sound of Hugo's following albums for the German indie label Normal, Second Revelator (produced by Mick Harvey) and Spiritual Thirst (produced by Chris Thompson). In '94 the band went into a hiatus as John Molyneux emigrated to Canada and Bryan Colechin moved back to Australia, and it was then that Hugo recorded the solo live album Stations of the Cross in Modena, Italy and began touring alone internationally. The rolling collective next rejoined in Melbourne '95 with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Michelangelo Russo to record an album for Polygram; Valley of Light, produced by Tony Cohen, became the Spirit's debut on Glitterhouse, the German label that still release the Spirit in Europe today, and was followed up by the extreme experimentalism of 96's Wet Dream album which featured clandestine recordings not only by Race but also Chris Hughes' early electronica. It was this album that marked the Spirit's conversion to the electro godhead of the age, probably due to artistic contamination in central europe during the long, almost endless, tours that Hugo and the band conducted in the late 90s . Around this time guitarist/pianist Nico Mansy joined the collective for the Chemical Wedding sessions in Brussels, and Norman Fagg became the band's live mixer and road manager. But by '98 Norman had moved on to another world and the Spirit was dispersed over five far-flung countries; the Last Frontier album was self-produced on the move as Hugo followed his ritual continental driftings, eventually basing himself in Sicily by circa 00. In 01, Glitterhoused released the double retrospective Long Time Ago and Hugo took a few years out to concentrate on the Helixed projects - Sepiatone, Transfargo and the Merola Matrix. After this total immersion in the experimental and the exotic, Hugo regrouped the Spirit in Melbourne in 03 to record what became the urban hypnosis of the Goldstreet Sessions, and pursued the sessions back to Berlin to include the Spirit's latest aquisitions - vocalist/pianist Marta Collica, lapsteel specialist Kristof Hahn and guitarist/producer Giovanni Ferrario. This line-up began touring again - with live mixer and road manager Dugald Jayes - and were recorded in Munich for the Italian music magazine Mucchio Selvaggio by the Deutsche Rundfunk, the concert tapes later released as the Live in Monaco cd. In 05 came Ambuscado, inspired by Bryan Colechin's archive of unreleased Spirit material, where the band experimented with electronic spirituals and rampant psychedelia on a whole new level. By the end of that year the Taoist Priests sessions had already begun in Sicily, with the stated intention of fusing the feral anarchy of Ambuscado with Hugo's recent slew of politically orientated songs. Released in 06, the Spirit convened back in Berlin to embark on a three-month tour, at the end of which, in between shows in Italy and Poland, they started the sessions for the forthcoming 53rd State album, scheduled for release in March 2008.

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DIISCOGRAPHY
Rue Morgue Blues 1989	Earls World 1990	Second Revelator 1991	Spiritual Thirst 1993
Station Of The Cross 1994	Valley of Light 1996	Wet Dreams 1996	Chemical Wedding 1998
Last Frontier 1999	Long Time Ago 2000	Goldstreet Sessions 2003	Ready To Go 2004
Live In Monaco 2004	Ambuscado 2005	Taoist Priest 2006	53rd State 2008
AMIGOS

Member Since:

June 22, 2006

Members:

THE TRUE Chris Hughes Brett Poliness Marta Collica Giovanni Ferrario Bryan Colechin.. Hugo Race Michelangelo Russo Nico Mansy Ralf Droge John Molyneux

Video: On The Bright Side

Video: As Above So Below

Video: Into The Valley Of The Light

Video: Taoist Priest

Influences:

Solaris, Roky, Odetta, Uncle Lee, William Buckley, James Hogg, Trevor James Constable, Otto Preminger, Noam Chomsky, Timothy Leary, Arturo Robles Gil, Graham Hancock, Epic Theatre, Jared Diamond, York Manhattan

Sounds Like:

Race and his colleagues are way badder than Calexico, much more distorted and twisted than today's Bad Seeds, and bluesier than any electronica/triphop project you care to mention. FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU, GERMANY A dreamlike blues laced with industrial experimentation, glacial digital beats, distant trombones and a voice cavernous as the recent Leonard Cohen. Music for besieged cities, beaten by incessant rain and populated by souls lost in the dark…." ROCKARILLA, ROME, ITALY Reeks of humid jungle heat amid disorienting samples, sick, slow-building horn lines and Race’s carnal nastiness. Scary. But very cool. RAVEWEB, AUSTRALIA The shadowy territory of an infected blues streaked with a poisoned restlessness, through desolate, dimly lit scenarios and melodies gone bad. Experimentation, obscurity and minimalist atmospheres. The rest is splinters of far away worlds, skeletal visions, petrified deconstructions… songs full of yearning if they weren’t cut off before their time, their nakedness swallowed up in a desert landscape. LIVEROCK, ITALY Enigmatic and unsettling, yet almost irresistibly attractive and appealing, like a knife wrapped in silk. THE BIG TAKEOVER, USA 'An alchemical fusion of some dark tribal initiation rites performed somewhere in the wilderness near the huge bonfire'.............. 'True Spirit evoke a seedy film noir underbelly where 3.00am bands play to folks who the next day might simply disappear'............"somehow like a combination of LSD propaganda and cabbalistic theosophy"

Record Label:

glitterhouse / spooky / bang! / gusstaff