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Ami Shavit was born in 1934 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Known as visual artist, his work involves in creating virtual environments with optic and kinetic art, including structures worked by electricity, moving tubular configurations illuminated by colored lights. He published In Alpha Mood in 1977 on Amis records, his own record company, at 500 copies, republished by Finders Keepers Records in 2015 (FKR 077LP) and Neural Oscillations And Alpha Rhythms in 2018 (VCR 012LP).
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"The soundtrack of my mind. Sounds derived from the war which still and always live in my mind"
Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series, Yom Kippur 1973 is a previously unheard masterpiece of Israeli multimedia artist Ami Shavit. As a professor of both philosophy and art and established kinetic artist in the 1970s, Shavit was fascinated with new and interactive technologies. While mostly focusing on visual art and mixed-media installations, a trip to New York in 1972 introduced him to synthesizers and triggered his curiosity to do some explorations into the world of music or "sound" as he preferred to call it. Ami's research was focused on the concept of meditative music that would help people to relax and create a cozy mood associated to the alpha brain waves and biofeedback. Before starting his artistic career, like all Israeli citizens, he had to serve in the army to his personal regret. Shavit had an operational position, which meant a high probability to get involved in a so called "hot situation". When in 1973 the Yom Kippur war broke out, Ami was enlisted again and got the unfortunate opportunity to encounter, in Hanoch Levin's words "the dead". Being an operation officer, he was in charge of evacuating Israeli wounded officers from battlefields to hospitals. Some 6000 injured men passed through us during that war, he recalled one year later in a newspaper interview. "I witnessed some sights that I can hardly forget. On the one hand I felt that as an artist I had to express the war events, on the other hand I felt that this is an almost impossible mission. Only Goya and Picasso, in his Guernica, addressed this topic successfully." Yom Kippur is the final and seminal of Shavit's sound experiments ever recorded and now finally available to the world. It is an extraordinarily strong piece in which the hectic moods and terrific experiences of war are deeply transmitted to the listener. May all soldiers, who are often forced to go through traumatic experiences beyond their own will, find ways to artistically digest and process the unwanted memories.
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Dead-Cert dip their dusty digits back in Ami Shavit's precious archive for another hemispheric harmonization of biofeedback techniques and hypnotic synth sonics following Finders Keepers ' reissue of 1977's In Alpha Mood back in 2015 (FKR 077LP). With an enviable private collection of synthesizers first started in 1972 during his travels to the US and shipped home to Tel Aviv, as an established kinetic artist, as well as a professor of both philosophy an art, Ami's main focus was art that involved technology; in particular being able to give something mechanical an emotive angle. As such he sought to combine his love of electronic music acts such as Tangerine Dream and Philip Glass and this new synthesizer technology with his interest in the relatively new technique of biofeedback -- a process in which technology is used to relay information about the body's functions enabling a change of physiological activity in order to manipulate them. Combined with his understanding of alpha brainwave, Ami embarked on an experiment with what he called "Alpha Mood" -- a state in which the brain is working in relaxation and in which he used music as a means of helping induce his own meditative state. With practically no formal musical training and working in complete isolation of the Tel Aviv music scene -- with the exception of allowing cult prog nearly men Zingale and a handful of close friends to use his private studio -- over the course of two years he recorded hours of experimental improvised music, or "sounds" as he prefers to call it. The fruit of that experimentation came in the form of a single privately pressed LP aptly titled In Alpha Mood. Part outsider electronic album; part physiological experiment; part work of art, it was limited to only 500 copies and distributed exclusively by a longtime friend, agent, and owner of a small local record shop in Tel Aviv. Five 1/4-inch tapes (including the In Alpha Mood master tape) represent the only remaining artifacts of Ami's experiments -- the rest having been either lost, given to friends, or simply thrown away. Undated and unannotated, these raw studio recordings provide a rare glimpse of Ami at work in his attempts to perfect his technique and reach the plane of "Alpha Mood". RIYL: Tangerine Dream, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Cluster. Artwork by Andy Votel. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering. Edition of 500.
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"The music of this record was stimulated by the theory and practice of biofeedback. It is aimed to create a calm, relaxed, meditative mood associated with alpha brain wave" --original back cover. Part outsider electronic album, part physiological experiment, part work of art, this is not your average new age record. The brainchild of a reclusive Israeli multimedia artist fascinated with philosophy, technology, and sound by the name of Ami Shavit, In Alpha Mood is the result of a personal and artistic effort to both overcome a personal trauma and push the boundaries of a fledgling physiological understanding while utilizing the burgeoning domestic synthesizer technology of the late '60s and early '70s. Shavit sought to combine his love of electronic music acts like Tangerine Dream, Philip Glass, and synthesizer technology with his fascination with the relatively new technique of biofeedback, but his work was interrupted when, in 1973, he was conscripted into the army during the Yom Kippur War. As he struggled to come to terms with his wartime experiences, he began adding battlefield soundbites to his recordings, and found a sort of catharsis. He returned to his work, and soon a longtime friend and owner of the Mango record shop (a Tel Aviv institution at the time) suggested he press some of his recordings on vinyl. Rather than cull disparate excerpts from his expansive tape archive of home recordings, Shavit began what would become the culmination of his years of experimentation and the centerpiece of his work with the music-induced state of working relaxation he called Alpha Mood. Recorded in Shavit's studio during a handful of sessions with no post-production, In Alpha Mood was mastered at Triton Studios (where Arik Einstein and Tamouz had also recorded), pressed by Hed Arzi Music (one of Israel's oldest and largest labels and manufacturers), and released on Shavit's Amis Records in 1977. Only 500 copies of a planned run of 5000 were pressed, and, with no publicity, it was sold to discerning record-buyers with little or no understanding of the record or its maker outside of his status as a prominent visual artist. Apart from a handful of Alpha Mood exhibitions in Israel, those 500 copies and six remaining master tapes (including that of In Alpha Mood) are the only remaining artifacts of Shavit's Alpha Mood experiments. This first vinyl reissue of In Alpha Mood was remastered from the original master tapes sourced from Shavit's private archive.
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