Cover art: Manuela Mitterhuber

The Western world has a brief history of ecstasy. Affected through and through by a belief system that triggered off the industrial revolution, achievement and pleasure were perceived as opposite poles of time spent. Work meant the construction of order. Pleasure meant indulgence in disarray. Formulated in more precise terms by Calvinism, such assumptions opened the world for the industrial revolution and the almost religious accumulation of wealth an property.

Also at the dawn of the revolution of the cultural industry, the same paradigms can be found. Freeing Rock´n´Roll from the indulgent disarray of darker and more intimate urges, over-achievers such as the Beatles would turn music into work. Manufacturing order in any possible aspect, intuition was replaced by multi-track recording and improvisation became theory. — mehr —