Z.B. Aids
For Franz
FRANCE L’EAU DES FLEURS eaudesfleurs003 LP (2023)
Z.B. Aids is Hendrik Hegray. Label owner Felix Gatier tells me that Hegray “did several artworks” for the label, and as such could be reckoned as the unofficial house designer and playing the same role as John Berg did for CBS. It so happens Hegray is also a “graphiste”, a visual creator who works in the graphzine milieu very particular to Paris, an anarchic zone of freedom where no taboo is off the table and no visual excess is forbidden. He produced at least one periodical with Jonas Delaborde which appears to be quite notorious for its title as much as its provocative subject matter, described as “nasty and absurd” and “a saturated compilation of drawings done by amateurs, musicians or comics authors”.
Well, he’s not averse to making sounds either – and here as Z.B. Aids he turns in a collection of his far-out experiments using just a guitar and a Walkman, so results are mostly degraded guitar sounds combined with a very singular approach to improvisation and free playing, and (I assume) crazy treatments of magnetic tape. This particular genius commands our respect for his deep underground credentials – few know about him or his work, even his supporters and friends – and despite art exhibits, art books (see above) and a record like this one, it is highly unlikely that the raw unrefined art of Hengray will ever reach the hungry audience it deserves. Or any audience at all, given current international trends intent on snuffing out art in all its forms, and replacing it with ersatz, meaningless pap. Michel Henritzi sums up the achievement of this great man in a single word – “alienation” – and remarks on his “aesthetic of disappointment and entropy”, qualities which are particularly to be savoured in today’s world of bland smiling faces, unearned positivity, and expectations of high-achievement.
If we can believe the testimony of the creator himself, his sole ambition is to be an outsider – abstract himself from society completely, live alone in the woods, make grotesque sculptures out of wood for his own satisfaction, and even recklessly fire bullets at inanimate objects in an act of nihilistic elan which aligns him with the Surrealists. But it seems the culture, the environment, and the circumstances are unwilling or unable to vomit out this anomalous growth in their midst, and so he operates in this very exciting interstitial zone striving hard to produce what he may and issue such statements as can be wrung from the neck and strings of his long-suffering guitar machine. I myself have never heard anything like this LP – ten tracks of unclassifiable outpourings, whose sincerity and deep truths cannot be doubted, yet will be rejected instantly by many listeners who fear its awkward, ungainly, ugly forms, shunning it just as they once shunned Quasimodo. I can only suggest you grasp a copy, rub your belly against the ‘Glauque Flamboyant’ and prepare for a lifetime of warped brain-damage and tormented dreams, but you’ll be all the better for it.
Limited to 150 copies and still in print at time of writing, with a poster included. Recommended; a truly unique statement from the DIY deep underground. From 20 Feb 2024.