Bell Branches

"Members during the exciting early years represented by these 15 LPs of :zoviet*france: were Ben Ponton, Robin Storey, Peter Jensen, Paolo Di Paolo and Lisa Hale. :zoviet*france: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard.

For thousands of years, mankind has been concerned with the interpretation of dreams, seeking medical and philosophical explanations of all that happens to us during sleep. At the same time, the images of dreams – be they beauti-ful or terrible, like a "théatre imaginaire" – offer a rich playground for all branches of art.
Hypnos, son of night and darkness, is the god of sleep. As Ovid reports, his sons are the Oneiroi, the dream gods: Morpheus is able to take on human form, Phobetor, the horror, slips into the skin of wild animals, Phantasos appears in the form of inanimate nature. Hypnos’ realm is guarded by Hesychia (calm), Aergia (indolence) and Lethe (oblivi-on). While Hypnos is also called the “generous one,” his twin brother is Thanatos, the gentle death; often the two often appear together.