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FRACTAL's music is well known for the use of instruments from different cultures and world ethnies, having strong rhythmical patterns through the use of African, Hindu, Turkish, Maya and Mapuche percussions, as well as wind instruments from opposingly different places such as Indonesia's Suling Gambuh, Armenia's Duduk, Turkey's Ney, the Peruvian Pincuyo or the altiplanic Quena and Quenacho. The music group of ethnic fusion (better known as World Music) FRACTAL is born in 1997. Started by Igor Ledermann (vox, keyboards) and Jose Francisco Zamorano (guitars, percussions), FRACTAL tried to represent, through music, southern and central american myths regarding the creation of the world and feelings towards death through the musicalization of African death poems
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This is how FRACTAL's first album, "de Creacion y Muerte" ("on Creation and Death") is born. The performances were recorded at "La Maquina" studio and one of the finest singers in Chile, Congreso's Francisco Sazo, participated in the recordings of songs "Ven" and "La Danza del Sol y la Luna" In 1999, FRACTAL was awarded a FONDART grant (FONDART is the national fund for the development of the arts), allowing the band to produce and release a second album in 2000: "La Memoria del Hielo" ("The memory of ice"), album inspired by the ancient inhabitants of Patagonia (a region of glaciars and extremely cold weather) such as the Aonikenk, Yamana, Kawaskar and, mainly, the Selk'nam. In this album, the particular musical metrics of these ancient natives was used as a main source of inspiration, as well as all of their cultural experiences and lifestyle carried on by them for nearly 10.000 years until the beginning of the 20th century, when the massive arrival of white men and their ideas of colonization, civilization and progress finally extinguished them |
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The recording of "La Memoria del Hielo" was made at "La Maquina" studios, with additional recordings in France and Morocco. Simultaneously with this work, FRACTAL composed music for the visual arts exposition "Cuerpos Pintados" ("Body Art"), being included in the compilations of the exposition "Musica del Cuerpo, Volumenes II y III" ("Music of the Body, Volumes II and III"). FRACTAL's music was presented in the exposition in Santiago, Chile, and then traveled with it to Israel and also the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. This work was performed exclusively with sounds made with and from the human body. In December 2000, FRACTAL delivers the original soundtrack for the Chilean horror movie "Chilean Gothic". All of the sounds used in the making of this soundtrack come from acoustic instruments, thus becoming an interesting challenge. This record gathers all the compositions used to accompany the film. FRACTAL's latest work is its newest album, named simply "FRACTAL". This record also counted with the support of FONDART and is based in myths and legends from different cultures from around the globe, focusing on the bridge between man, its roots and its deities. FRACTAL carries out its live performances with visual aids based on videos and photographs of several different people and places, from Acteal, Mexico, to the Chilean Patagonia. This work is in charge of anthropologist Andres Charrier. His work related to FRACTAL's "La Memoria del Hielo" is particularly special, for Charrier traveled to the south of Chile to live with one of the last Kawaskar families still alive at Puerto Eden. While there, he had the chance to capture images and visual material that perfectly blends with the archive audio recordings of the last Selk'nam aborigins, made previous to their extintion. Recently, FRACTAL was awarded its third FONDART grant with the project "FRACTAL SINFONICO", in which the band made a live performance with an orchestra of 15 classical musicians. The show was released in DVD available in www.suena.cl and stores of Sello Oveja Negra. |
