Ghedalia Tazartes

condition (record/cover): M / M

With original hand-numbered (97/200) innersleeve without name on the certification.

A single-sided, limited-edition, numbered LP released 2015 on the Italian experimental label Holidays Records (HOL 083), comprising a single extended piece by Ghédalia Tazartès: "Il Regalo Della Befana" ("The Befana's Gift"), a thirty-minute composition originally conceived as the third part of his 1984 LP Une Éclipse Totale De Soleil but never released in that context. The piece had appeared as a bonus track on the Alga Marghen CD edition of the album in the 1990s; the 2015 Holidays Records LP gave it its first standalone vinyl release.

The music continues the Eclipse methodology: layered multi-tracked vocals weaving in and out of invented languages, accordion drones, percussion, tape collage. Where the original Eclipse moves between concentrated short pieces, "Il Regalo" sits in a single long-form trance, slowly accumulating layers across half an hour. The title gestures toward the Italian folk figure of La Befana (the witch-like woman who delivers gifts to Italian children on Epiphany Eve), and the music carries a strange ritual quality, simultaneously sacred and apocryphal, that fits the reference exactly.

The original vintage Holidays Records Italian pressing on HOL 083, single-sided with image silk-screened on the B side, in a limited numbered edition. Holidays Records, the Italian label that also handles Jim O'Rourke, Lee Ranaldo and selected Christoph Heemann releases, has built one of the most consistent contemporary experimental catalogs in Europe.