Copernicus (musician)

Perhaps the most fitting way to describe Copernicus is as a performance poet. Even though he (originally named Joseph Smalkowski) plays keyboards, Copernicus refuses to be categorised as a musician. Despite often having inhabited the alternative New York Rock 'n Roll scene, his music also exudes strong elements of Jazz, Classical and the Avant Garde. Even though Copernicus' preferred recording strategy is that of improvisation, his epic pieces tend to revolve around themes, riffs and repeated clusters, moving along a clearly linear pathway.

The booming delivery and abstract texts evoke the spirit of classic Beat Generation poetry, but the Copernicus stance goes back even further to the theatrical confrontations of the Dada movement. He's always preferred the improvisatory approach; even though each poem's grist might be prepared in advance, its rhythms and content might be disassembled in the moment.

Copernicus has always been fiercely independent, since he first started recording in this manner, back at the dawn of the 1980s. He organizes the recording sessions, sculpts the assembled band, oversees the album artwork and releases each disc on his own Nevermore, Inc. label. 1985 brought Nothing Exists, which emphatically laid out the themes of his subsequent work. A burst of creativity led to the swift succession of Victim Of The Sky (1987), Deeper (1989) and Null (1990). Often, Copernicus would perform with large-scale ensembles, but in 1991 he initiated the practice of giving completely solo performances, revealing his declamations in a stark, stripped-down, confrontational space. He views himself as a conduit for abstract ideas and philosophical notions. Copernicus decided that his particular marriage of music and narrative was the best way to communicate his thoughts and concepts to a receptive audience.

He released No Borderline in 1993, but there was to be a longer gap before 2001's Immediate Eternity which moved in a completely different direction as its creator was spending increasing amounts of time in Ecuador, where the Spanish version of the album La Eternidad Inmediata was released the same year. The album is followed by 2005 releases of Immediate Eternity II, Die Sofortige Ewigkeit II (in German), L'Eternite Immediate II (in French) and La eternidad inmediata II (in Spanish). Copernicus was evolving after having spent three years penning his book, also called Immediate Eternity. He linked up with Los Nomadas from Guayaquil, the country's biggest city, and his music moved temporarily more towards the zone of Jazz-Rock fusion. Now, with {disappearance}, Copernicus has made a return to the old established methods, refining them into what is probably his key distillation of an ongoing obsession with the freedom and beauty of nothingness.

Incredibly, with the recent addition of 25 performance videos to his web page, www.copernicusonline.net, we finally get to not only see Copernicus in performance but to understand through video exactly what he has been attempting to communicate to the public for the last 25 years. His ideas break through in a way that neither the CDs or the book, Immediate Eternity, can accomplish.

Discography

• Nothing Exists (1985)
• Victim of the Sky (1986)
• From Bacteria (1987)
• Deeper (1989)
• Null (1990)
• No Borderline (1993)
• Immediate Eternity (2001)
• La Eternidad Inmediata (2001)
• Immediate Eternity II (2005)
• La Eternidad Inmediata II (2005)
• Sofortige Ewigkeit II (2005)
• L'Éternité Immédiate II (2005)
• [disappearance] (2009)
• Nothing Exists (2010)
• Cipher and Decipher (2011)

External links

• Official Copernicus website
• Copernicus at Allmusic
• Copernicus discography at Discogs
• Copernicus discography at MusicBrainz
• Article about Copernicus
• Copernicus | disappearance

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