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Andreas Ammer & Console
"Have You Ever Heard Of Wilhelm Reich?"
Stereo CD / 5.1 DVD |
In the end he believed he was a student of Freud and a friend of Einstein, the offspring of a celestial race. And Wilhelm Reich had already solved all of humanity's problems. Whether as a brilliant Austrian psychiatrist ('The Sexual Revolution'), later as a clear-sighted analyst of the global crisis ('The Mass Psychology of Fascism'), then as a communist and sexual politician ('Sexpol') or finally – after his cryptic discovery of orgone energy – as a healer of cancer and rainmaker in the American desert ('The ORANUR Experiment'), Wilhelm Reich solved all the world's problems and those of space as well.
When Wilhelm Reich's collaborators informed the US government that he had discovered the secret of life, the authorities replied that in their view there was no such thing. On the contrary: those in power necessarily regarded so much knowledge as sinister. "Have You Ever Heard Of Wilhelm Reich?" is one of the questions the FBI asked as they were systematically spying on the polymath Wilhelm Reich in the fifties. The secret service were desperately looking for reasons to put a stop to the activities of the once celebrated psychiatrist, now regarded as a quack. In return, Reich warned the FBI of the "red fascists", the "emotional plague" (EP for short) or the UFOs which America would have trouble defeating without his help.
The FBI burned his books. Wilhelm Reich died in 1957 in an American jail. But his greatest successes were yet to come. This did not mean that he would return to earth – as he dreamed he would and as Patti Smith later described in a song (Birdland) – in a spaceship, but it was to happen to him posthumously as the prophet of the student movement. The latter adopted Reich's slogan of the "sexual revolution". The beat poet W.S. Burroughs spent hours in Reich's orgone accumulator to get inspiration and hippies sang hymns to Reich's inventions.
To commemorate the universal genius Wilhelm Reich, Andreas Ammer & Console have created acrimonious tracks from the secret files of the FBI, from the public history of pop music and other obscure archives. "Have You Ever Heard Of Wilhelm Reich?" works like a musical of the world spirit or an acoustic orgone accumulator. A Reichian orgone accumulator (ORAC for short; assembly instructions enclosed) is a wooden box with a steel lining whose functioning was once described in song as follows by the space rock band Hawkwind: "I've got an Orgone Accumulator / It makes me feel greater (...) It’s a back brain stimulator / It’s a cerebral vibrator". It is this that the present radio play deals with and sings about. (Live at a place near you or as DVD in your player).
intermedium
rec. 042
ISBN 978-3-943157-42-0
recommended retail price 19,90 €
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