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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Barbara Gogan rose to prominence in one of the many dark-punk groups of the 1980s, the Passions, whose depressed, anguished, and minimally melodic sound stood out from the "gothicized" style of their competitors. The unsettling atmospheres of Michael And Miranda (Fiction, 1980) effectively formed a bridge between the nihilism of punk-rock and the romanticism of dark-punk. The litanies of Thirty Thousand Feet Over China (Polydor, 1981) gained a minimum of musicality thanks to songs like I'm In Love With A German Film Star and Bachelor Girls. The single Africa Mine completed the transition and led to the polished and sophisticated sound of Sanctuary (Polydor, 1982). The Irish-born Gogan moved to New York and then to Paris, where she met the composer Hector Zazou. She would collaborate on almost all of his records from Sahara Blue (Made To Measure, 1992) onward and would be credited as co-author of Made On Earth (Crammed, 1997), an album that at times recalls the best work of Jane Siberry and Kate Bush, as well as the subsequent Lights In The Dark (Detour, 1999).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Barbara Gogan released her first solo album later in her career, after a number
of distinguished collaborations and projects in the realm of avantgarde music.
Wheels/ Ruedas (Gogan, 2002) is a 74-minute monolith that belongs to
the category of new-age music in that it "promotes relaxation and
revitalization of the human body", but is more closely related to Robert
Ashley's spoken operas of the 1970s.
The first seven tracks are spoken meditations on the seven "chakras"
(or "wheels") accompanied by a slow, majestic, organic flow of electronic and
natural sounds (birds, water, children, Tibetan monks).
These are followed by the instrumental version of the same seven tracks.
Each piece exhibits a cinematic quality:
the celestial, slowly developing "om" of Roots / RaĄces,
the pastoral vignette of Hearth / Hogar,
the guitar reverbs of Carnival / Carnaval,
the disjointed percussions and Heart / CorazĒn,
the animal voices of Calling / Llamando,
the crickets and cosmic waves of Mind / Mente,
the pure liquid tones of Return / Vuelta.
Each sounds like a documentary, portraing the spiritual growth of the soul
as well as the passing of time and the ever changing universe.
Dust (Lulu, 2003) is the first output of Gogan's new project,
Goldfish, a duo with guitarist Stephen Wright.
This two-CD project comprises seven brief compositions
for vocals, guitars and laptop
(notably the hallucinated rant with mind-bending distortion of
Patty Smith)
and a multimedia piece, Electric Firefly.
Gogan formed
the duo Barbara+Marco
with Italian musician Marco Dianese that
released
Sonic Garden Experience (2022),
Fellow Alliances (2023),
Bench (2024) and Eikasia (2025).
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