VÁGTÁZÓ HALOTTKÉMEK/abbr. VHK
(cca. The Galloping Coroners, Die Rasenden Leichenbeschauer)
short biography
The music of the VHK is called to life by the attraction of the completion of life. It is a natural music, born by the creative power of Nature. In the sense as Bela Bartok wrote: "the ethnic music is a natural phenomenon, the result of the formative activity of the unconsciously active natural force". The deepest self-expression reaches back to this natural, cosmic force and has an elementary, magical power. This is why we call the music we live as magical folk-music.
The band emerged at 1975, finding instinctively its path to play instinctive primeval music liberating the elementary powers of nature creating ourselves and revolting to its high completion in a free spontaneity and overwhelming energy. The VHK discovered a new method of playing music, which is not a simple improvisation but - in its best moments - a completely free creation of music born on stage, liberating the deepest musical creative power. Besides these elements, the VHK also plays more or less pre-written songs. This music is called many times as shamanistic ethno or psychedelic hardcore, but it is in reality an unrestricted outburst of life energy. This is not only a music but rather an attitude to grasp the essence of life with our deepest nature and let it grow by its own laws. The group says it is a magical folk-music, a cosmic vision about the role of earthly life on the destination of the Universe. It develops in a sovereign way as a self-revelation with its elementary power. The VHK is a distinguished cultic band in Hungary as well as in Germany.
The authorities in an afraid from the consequences interrupted the first eight concerts. The band were banished for eleven years, nevertheless even at that time it continuously found spontaneous occasions to act by chance. Sometimes the group was pushed to the stage by the audience of an other group, other times playing by pseudonyms, at other occasions as guest musicians of friendly bands and without announcing themselves as a band at their the concert. Meantime they won the festival of the experimental film studio in 1981. The video of this event was presented many times in the West German TV. Gábor Bódy, the internationally famous and youngly died film-director made his film “Dog’s Night Song” with them, including the lead howler Attila Grandpierre in one of the featuring roles. VHK plays from 1984 regularly in the West. In 1986, when Amsterdam was the “ cultural capital of Europe” , the Dutch Queen, Beatrix personally intervened at the Hungarian authorities in order to allow the guest performance of the band. A similar event happened in 1987 when Fred Sinowatz, the Austrian chancellor had to interact with the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. They played in the “ Mythen, Monstren and Mutationen” festival in Berlin, Tempodrom, 1988, together with La Fura dels Baus, where VHK was the best surprise (Zitty Berlin, 1988). Einstürzende Neubauten, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra and Iggy Pop regarded VHK as one of the most important bands. VHK hosted Rollins Band in Hungary where Rollins were shocked on the overwhelming effect of VHK on the audience. Rollins Band invited VHK for a tour in England in 1989. In 1992, our CD "Hammering on the Gates of Nothingness" reached the 2nd position on the Top-100 list of the year of a Belgian Radio. Many of our CDs were and are on airplay in US college radios.
Dietmar Lupfer, the first manager of the band, and later on the famous American cult label Alternative Tentacles released our records “Teach Death a Lesson” (1988), “Jump Out the World-Instinct”(1990), “Hammering on the Gates of Nothingness” (1992). The London chief of Alternative Tentacles Bill Gilliam described the music of VHK as “primal God-feeling”. Many American managers suggested VHK to play in USA, telling that "every American band wants to play such a music what you do, but they cannot." Dietmar took the band to the New Music Seminar in 1990, New York. The New York Times wrote “the Coroner’s music is basic and elemental and filled with obsessive, galvanizing passion.” Melody Maker wrote on the show of VHK as "hypnotising" at the "Pop Komm!", the large international festival of Germany, where - by the festival magazine - they get the greatest power on the audience. The VHK released the live-album “Giant Space!”(1994). VHK played in the Steirischer Herbst ’95, completed with the fellows of Les Tambours du Bronx, 27 people on the same stage. VHK attracts 40 000 people in the Diáksziget (Student’s Island) festival, one of the biggest festivals of Europe, and reaches an extraordinary effect on the crowd. Iggy Pop reported about them as the most interesting band today (1996).
Our recent CD's “ The Re-conquest of the Eden - 1st attack, and 2nd attack” (1997, 1998) is of a band radically improved, with a new guitarist and bassist, and invited musicians playing on contrabass, violin, flute, hurdy-gurdy and cymbal. We used basically two sounds: one energetic for the electric songs and one natural and vital dreamspace for the acoustic songs. Both of these CDs reached the Top-40 of the Hungarian best-selling records and stayed there for 3 months. More importantly, the real scene for VHK is to play alive. Many people are very much intensified and deeply surprised when seeing the VHK alive on stage. In their last European tour (1999 August) they were invited by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, where the performed a special shamanistic ceremony.
The new VHK recording "Dancing with the Sun" (1999/2000) is an initiation to the world-experience and life-seeing of VHK. This recording contains six of the best songs we wrote in the last three years, and contains more than 40 minutes of the most complete, immediate music creation so much characteristic to the VHK using the creative powers of Nature in the Bartokian sense. This new recording keeps on exploring the ancient ethnic musical roots of mankind. This CD is released in May 2000 in North-America and Western Europe by Neurot Recordings (USA).
Contact address:
Attila Grandpierre
E-mail: grandp@ ella.hu
Vagtazo@freemail.hu
Internet site: http://www.mediastorm.hu/vhk
Vhk.mediastorm.hu
http://trottel.mentha.hu/hirek.html
http://www.mediastorm.hu/grandpierre
VHK discography
11.) Reconquering Eden - 1st attack, 1997 March, VHK-MCD, Hungary
12.) Reconquering Eden - 2nd attack, 1998 August, VHK-Periferic Records, Hungary
13.) Dancing with the Sun, 1999 December, Hungary/2000 /May, USA, Europe, VHK-Neurot Recordings
Reviews and articles
Zitty Berlin, 1988, Nr. 14
“ The songs of VHK are growing towards a dreamlike ecstasy coming from the heart, the usual song-structure and singing style are completely missing, the magic dance-rhythm captures and raptures the audience, which you cannot find in the today’s stylised neon-coolness only at the natural tribes living in other era. Permanent rhythm-accelerations, abrupt speeding-up of the almost brutal-ancient drums, amorphous collage of the head-voices, animal voice playbacks and volcanically exploding guitar riffs - all these things are completed with an unconsciousness jungle of sounds in which you get lost and cannot come back easily, since the perception of time and space is changing into completely new forms.”
New York Times, February 28, 1990
“the Coroner’s music is basic and elemental and filled with obsessive, galvanizing passion.”
Forced Exposure, # 16, 1990 American fanzine:
“Had this LP come in ‘73 in a tiny enough press run, it’d be one of the most legendary “lost” record of that decade”.
Maximum Rock’N Roll (USA), July 1991, #98
“this band is equal in spirit and grit to faves like SONIC YOUTH or BIG BLACK but with an identity all its own.”
NMI&Messitsch, a German fanzine, July/August 1991
“In all moderation: this is the best record of last week, month, year, ...”.
The Melody Maker (U. K.), September 26, 1992 és October 10, 1992
“As the singer spins around inside the band’s mesmeric voodoo howl like whirling dervish the effect is almost hypnotising. Incredible. Watching them play in Cologne, I was fascinated, not just by the band’s performance (which was amazing) but by the frenzied reaction of the crowd. Seeing VHK, I realised just what a dangerous proposition rock’n’roll can be.”
NMI Messitsch (Germany), 08/92
“The VHK is definitively the best from the East. The Coroners are a musical excess, a 50 minutes trance. They are insane drums, overscrewn guitars, screaming Shamans. They are a dream. Listen it extreme loud. Get lost in it. Not come back anymore.”
Metal Hammer
“If this band is not a cult, I do not know what cult is.”
Various Artists, a German fanzine:
“This is a shamanistic ethno-punk. But it is more than music. It is a trip into the fourth dimension. Close your eyes, feel the Universe and you will find yourself in the infinite layer of passion again. You forget about your name, your background, your sex and, for sure, your ratio. What still counts, is the primal instinct. Here you can gratify it. Psychotherapy from vinyl. A band outer to everyday norms and conformity. A masterwork!”
VOLT-magazine, a Hungarian journal, 1994
“ The VHK is perhaps the only Hungarian band which is able to produce a cathartic musical attack.”
Rockinform, a Hungarian periodical, March 1995
“This recording is one of the highest points of the improvisative music”.
Bananafish, San Franciscan fanzine, 1995, No. 10
“ Each time I hear a new VHK record I relive this atavistic reverie - it’s like reentering the womb. VHK are so improbable, so wonderful and yet so seemingly necessary (were they not to exist they would have to be invented), that they function for me like my favourite fairy tales used to when I was a kid. When I first discovered their 1988 LP Teach Death a Lesson, I was bowled over by its combination of monastic psychedelia, rock’n’roll codpiece swagger and sheer alien abduction logical completeness, this wondering is with me yet. VHK sound like they’re from another world and another time.”
Moshable, a Danish fanzine, 1995
“ This band have been around for many years now and have played almost everywhere in Europe but still they remain one of Europe’s best kept secret. This is one of the most interesting bands you’re likely to come across this year.”
Oor, a Dutch music magazin, March 1996, Iggy Pop-interview
“ Do you follow the contemporary pop-scene?
- Yes. There are some new bands, like the VHK from Hungary, which I find good. The punk should sound as if it were invented today! I have to add, that I hear quite a few really new things. This is why I like VHK. They sound a bit strange, individual, but yet this is what punk is.”
Élet és Irodalom (Hungary), a Hungarian weekly journal on literature and art, May 3, 1996
“ The magmatic VHK-concert entitled “ Windwhirls and Dreamwells” seems to open new pathways in the history of the band. Their music is again determined by the pagan and cosmic power, the more bold instrumental improvisation, and the present-time stage concentration can raise their music to the ethereal heights.”
Rockinform (Hungary), 1997 March, a Hungarian periodical
Last year’s concerts already suggested, that the VHK preparing for a new big shot. Still it is surprising, how much it is fine, cleared, and at the same time a musically complex material that they produced...At the end of the record there is a real music delicacy. It is scarcely possible to describe it in words: as the finale of the more than 70 minutes VHK-music it gives a simply cathartic experience.
Nemzedéki Probléma (Generational Problem), Hungary, 1997 summer
The VHK is one of the most thrilling concert experiences, and they are also thrilling in their records. Instead of too much verbosity, I tell you that the song "Fatal Love" is a part of the Way, the solution of the human consciousness in the music.
Crohinga Well (Belgium), 1998, #14
Each Vagtazo Halottkemek album is a happening to look forward to but this one is so good it should be able to open some doors here and there...
Budapest Week, 1998 September
If you are looking for music that is both unique and characteristically Hungarian, there is hardly a better choice than VHK...When some archeologist from outer space digs this recording up from under the ruins of the Mammut shopping center thousands of years from now, he will think what a nice late-twentieth century folk song "Nincsen Távol" (It's not Far Away) was, and how sad it is that no one understood what the crazy dervish was talking about.
Mancs (Hungary), 2000 January 20
Ewvery time when listening a VHK record I am transferred to the place where the really important events set up, I am tending to believe that I will be able to stay at the surface of life, experience the real life...this is why it is always a holiday when a new VHK CD comes out, since for at least 74 minutes I feel myself to such a being, which I should be on every rotten day.