Hugo Kauder was born in Tobitschau, Moravia - now a part of the Czech Republic - in 1888. Self-taught as a composer, he played the viola in professional orchestras and in string quartets. He settled in the United States in the early 1940s having fled from the Nazis. He was a prolific composer with 19 string quartets weighing in amidst some three hundred other instrumental and vocal compositions. In addition to composing and teaching he was the author of a respected book on counterpoint that was published in 1960.
This 1997 duet recording between drumming ace Bobby Previte and saxophonist John Zorn is indicative – pretty much – of what Zorn's music was like at the time: There are plenty of hard bop linguistics mixed in with film noir themes and screeching, burning skronk. There are also short, lucid moments of melodic tranquility that prefigure much of Zorn's work from 1999 on. But mostly, this series of duets reveals something else, that two players from similar backgrounds, who have played in the same bands together and can understand each other on an almost symbiotic level, can still approach the same musical problem from two different sides and come up with the same answer.
Euclid’s one and only album is among the very best of it’s type, which is most certainly Heavy Rock at it’s best. The musicians themselves were of an excellent caliber & very experienced, coming from a diverse New England Garage & Psych Rock background. Groups from which they haled prior included the noteworthy Psych tinged Garage act the Lazy Smoke as well as Garage rockers the Cobras. One of the coolest things about this album is the overall evidence of it’s group members various background influence on it. In Euclid, you get the very best of it all. You have the raw & ferocious high energy Garage element mixed with a very clear and real Psychedelic conviction of the drug saturated times.